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HOEACE MANN 






Edited by NICHOLAS MURRAY BUTLER 



HORACE MANN 



THE COMMON SCHOOL REVIVAL IN 
THE UNITED STATES 



B/Af HINSDALE, Ph.D., LL.D. 

Professor of the Science and the Art of Teaching in the 
University of Michigan 



" Let the next generation, then, he my client " 

HORACE MANN 



NEW YORK 

CHAKLES SCRIBNEE'S SONS 

1898 




TWO COPIES RECEtVED 

^t ^\ I u 



3448 



COPYRIGHT, 1898, BY 
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 



J. S. Gushing & Co. - Berwick & Smith 

Norwood Mass. U.S.A. 



PREFACE 

The single purpose of this book is fairly to set 
before the reader Horace Mann as an educator in his 
historical position and relations. Everything is made 
to bend to this central idea. The aim is to tell the 
story clearly and simply, and in a manner to utilize 
some part, at least, of the great motive power with 
which Mr. Mann's life is charged. The materials for 
the story have been drawn mainly from the Life and 
Works of Horace Mann, five Vols., Boston, 1891. 
The other sources of information used in the prepara- 
tion of the work are generally indicated in footnotes. 
Mrs. Mann's Life of Horace Mann, which is Vol. I. of 
the Life and Works, aboimds in extracts from his 
letters and diaries, and also contains many letters and 
extracts from letters written to him. It is, therefore, 
to a great extent a book of original materials, and its 
value is largely due to this fact. In some parts of 
the present work, and particularly in Chapter III., 
Mr. Mann's own language is often used with little 
change beyond what is necessary to transfer the nar- 
rative from the first person to the third person. This 



vi PREFACE 

lias seemed better than to load the pages with formal 
quotations. Mrs. Mann's work is commonly referred 
to simply as The Life. Some facts have been fur- 
nished by Mr. George C. Mann of Jamaica Plain, 
Massachusetts, son of Horace Mann. For this cour- 
tesy, and other valuable assistance that he has cheer- 
fully rendered, the author extends to Mr. Mann his 
grateful acknowledgments. 

B. A. HINSDALE. 
University of Michigan, 
November 15, 1897. 



CONTENTS 



CHAP. PAGE 

I. Two Centuries of Common Schools . . 1 
II. Horace Mann's Forerunners . . . .46 

III. Horace Mann's Schools and Schoolmasters . 75 

IV. Secretary of the Massachusetts Board op 

Education 105 

V. The Secretaryship in Outline .... 115 

VI. The Massachusetts Normal Schools . . 145 

VII. The Reports to the Board of Education . 162 

VIII. The Controversy with Boston Schoolmasters 181 

IX. The Controversy with Religious Sectaries . 210 

X. Mr. Mann a Member of Congress . . . 233 

XI, Horace Mann President of Antioch College 242 

XII. Horace Mann's Character and Work . . 266 

XIII. The Progress of the Common School Revival 281 

Bibliography ......... 311 

Index . . .321 

vn 



HORACE MANN 

CHAPTER I 

TWO CENTURIES OF COMMON SCHOOLS 

Any adequate account of Horace Mann, and of the 
Common School Eevival in the United States with 
which his name is connected, must be introduced by 
a general view of the progress of elementary educa- 
tion in the country for the first two centuries of its 
history. Accordingly, the first and second chapters of 
this work will be devoted to that object. Principal 
attention will be given to New England. Moreover, 
Massachusetts will hold the pre-eminence, because it 
was on her soil that the American system of common 
schools originated, and because she was both the 
home of Horace Mann and the first beneficiary of 
the great work that he accomplished. 

I. Massachusetts 

The Puritan character had been well annealed in 
the hot furnace that glowed in England following 
the Eeformation, and it is nowhere seen to better 
advantage than in the New England colonies. " God 
sifted a whole nation," the familiar quotation runs, 
"that he might send choice grain out into this 

B 1 



2 HORACE MANN 

wilderness." The New England Puritans were as 
learned as they were pious, and as thoroughly de- 
voted to education as they were to religion. Men 
of learning so abounded among them that, at one 
time, they counted one Cambridge graduate for every 
two hundred and fifty persons, and not a few Oxford 
men besides. In repute the teacher stood next to the 
minister. The leaders were thoroughly acquainted 
with the results, both of the Eenaissance and of the 
Eef ormation ; they regarded them as inseparable ; and 
so as soon as possible, after they made their first be- 
ginning, they took steps to plant the school and the 
church side by side in their new home. 

In February, 1635, the town of Boston took action 
to establish its celebrated Latin school, the most 
venerable educational institution in New England.^ 
Other towns followed the example that Boston had 
set, and by 1647 as many as seven similar schools 
existed on the shores of Massachusetts Bay. In 
1636, 1637 the General Court founded Harvard Col- 
lege, the oldest American seat of higher learning. 
The first colonial action relating to general education 
was had in 1641, when the General Court desired 
"that the elders would make a catechism for the 
instruction of youth in the grounds of religion." 
This expression of desire was soon followed by some- 
thing more decisive. The grammar schools and the 
college together would fill the two upper divisions of 
the tripartite scheme of education; but the educa- 
tional system could not be considered satisfactory 

1 The Oldest School in America. An oration by Phillips Brooks, 
D.D., etc. Boston, 1885. 



TWO CENTURIES OF COMMON SCHOOLS 3 

until proper elementary schools were founded, and 
tlie grammar schools put upon a firmer foundation 
than mere local consent or agreement. So, on June 
14, 1642, the General Court enacted compulsory edu- 
cation. Since many parents and masters neglected 
the training of their children in learning and em- 
ployment profitable to the Commonwealth, the Court 
ordered that the selectmen in every town should 
thenceforth stand charged with the care of redress- 
ing the evil; and to this end they should be clothed 
with power to take account, from time to time, of all 
parents and masters, and of their children in respect 
to calling and employment, and especially in respect 
to their ability to read and understand the principles 
of religion and the capital laws of the country. 
Fines should be imposed upon all who neglected the 
training of their children, or refused to render an 
account to the selectmen when called upon to do so.^ 
While the Act of 1642 made education compulsory, 
it did not provide schools or teachers; the people 
were still left to domestic instruction, to private 
teachers, and to such voluntary schools as they 
should organize among themselves. The situation 
was illogical as well as inconvenient ; so at least 
the statesmen of the Plantation seem to have thought, 
for, on November 11, 1647, the General Court enacted 
a general school law, the first one, be it observed, 
met with in American history. In modernized spell- 
ing this law runs as follows : 

1 A collection of the early Massachusetts statutes relating to 
education will be found in The Repoi^t of the Commissioner of 
Education for 1892, 1893, Vol. II., pp. 1225-1339. 



4 HORACE MANN 

"It being one chief object of that old deluder, 
Satan, to keep men from the knowledge of the 
Scriptures, as in former times by keeping them 
in an unknown tongue, so in these latter times by 
persuading from the use of tongues, that so at least 
the true sense and meaning of the original might be 
clouded by false glosses of saint-seeming deceivers, 
that learning may not be buried in the grave of our 
fathers in the Church and Commonwealth, the Lord 
assisting our endeavors, — 

^^ It is therefore ordered, That every township in 
this jurisdiction, after the Lord hath increased them 
to the number of fifty householders, shall then forth- 
with appoint one within their town to teach all such 
children as shall resort to him to write and read, 
whose wages shall be paid either by the parents or 
masters of such children, or by the inhabitants in 
general, by way of supply, as the major part of 
those that order the prudentials of the town shall 
appoint: Provided, Those that send their children 
be not oppressed by paying much more than they 
can have them taught for in other towns; and 

" It is further ordered. That where any town shall 
increase to the number of one hundred families or 
householders, they shall set up a grammar school, 
the master thereof being able to instruct youth so 
far as they may be fitted for the university: Pro- 
vided, That if any town neglect the performance 
hereof above one year, that every such town shall 
pay five pounds to the next school until they shall 
perform this order." 

In 1647 Massachusetts consisted of some thirty 



TWO CENTURIES OF COMMON SCHOOLS 5 

towns, inhabited by about twenty thousand people. 
The law of that date rounded out the outline of the 
system of public instruction as it exists to-day. 
Evolution and not revolution has characterized the 
system from the beginning. Let us see what this 
outline really contained. 

The Act recognizes the three customary grades of 
education, — elementary, secondary, and higher, — and 
all are made subject to the State's control. It lays 
stress upon the relation of education to the State; 
what is profitable to the Commonwealth is set up 
as the criterion to govern the action of the General 
Court. Again, while the responsibility of educating 
children is placed primarily upon parents and mas- 
ters, the State may see to it that parents and masters 
perform their duty. Money may be raised by gen- 
eral taxation to defray the cost of public education; 
whether it shall be done or not, it is left with the 
towns themselves to determine. School provision 
is made compulsory, but not school attendance; the 
" shall " of the Act of 1647 is directed to towns not 
parents, and so is the fine that is to be imposed for 
non-compliance with legal duty. Citizens may pro-- 
vide tuition for their children at home, or in private 
schools as before. The schools are not formally 
free therefore, since they are to be supported either 
by those who use the schools or by the inhabitants 
of the town in general by way of supply, or by both 
of these. Important history turned on this word 
"or," as we shall see hereafter. 

In the first elementary schools of Massachusetts 
only writing and reading were required to be taught. 



6 HORACE MANN 

The names that the secondary schools bore, Latin 
schools and grammar schools, suggest the staple of 
the teaching that they furnished. The curriculum 
of Harvard College consisted mainly of the Greek, 
Roman, and Oriental languages and divinity. Two 
reasons may be suggested for the stress that 
the Puritans placed on languages and language 
teaching. In its inception the Eenaissance was a 
distinctly classical movement; while Comenius, the ^ 
founder of the Realistic School of Pedagogy, was 
the contemporary of the founders of New England.^ 
It preceded and, to a great extent, caused the Ref- 
ormation. Then Protestantism rests upon the au- 
thority of a book, a fact that has given primary 
education a great importance in all thoroughly Prot- 
estant countries. Now, to borrow Burke's famous 
phrase,^Puritanism was the dissidence of dissent, the 
Protestantism of the Protestant religion; so that for 
a Puritan to contend earnestly for the faith once de- 
livered to the saints was to contend earnestly for the 
Bible. The preamble of the Act of 1647 is aimed 
straight at the Church of Rome and at those Angli- 
"cans who affected her ways, and the Act itself is 
alive with the spirit that emanated from Erasmus 
and Luther. 

The question where the Puritans of Massachusetts 
Bay got their educational ideas' has been sometimes 

1 On the authority of a passage iu Cotton Mather's Magnolia, 
it has been assumed that Comenius was offered the presidency of 
Harvard College. Mr. W. H. Monroe has subjected the assumption 
to a thorough examination, and reached the conclusion that Mather 
was in error. — Educational Bevieio, November, 1896, ^' Was Come- 
nius called to Harvard ? " 



TWO CENTURIES OF COMMON SCHOOLS 7 

asked. These Puritans were Englishmeii, and they 
sought to reproduce Old England, freed from what 
thej thought her faults, in New England. The men 
who laid the foundations of the new Cambridge had 
studied at the old Cambridge, and they patterned 
after it. The grammar schools that they set up in 
Boston and the other towns were modelled after the 
grammar schools that they had attended in the old 
home. The originals of the primary schools are less 
definite. Still the three grades of schools grow out 
of the nature of studies as related to the human 
mind: Comenius had already formulated the divi- 
sion in The School of Infancy ; while the idea, and to 
a certain extent the practice, of the tripartite division 
had become familiar in all countries that had been 
touched by the genius of Protestantism. 

How generally or completely the foregoing legis- 
lation was carried out in Massachusetts, it is not 
easy at this distance of time to determine. In gen- 
eral it may be said that the system of education 
established in those early years grew for a time 
with the growth of the Commonwealth. The many 
learned to write and read in the elementary schools ; 
the few fitted for college in the Latin schools and 
graduated at Harvard. Previous to the Revolution 
Massachusetts, far more than any of the colonies 
outside of New England, was self-educated. The 
native schools furnished a supply of learned men 
for the service of the State and of the Church. 

The primary schools and grammar schools were 
created, managed, and in part supported by the 
towns, but they were not for a long time generally 



8 HORACE MANN 

free. The first planters had paid school fees in 
England, and they continued the practice in their 
new home. Then Governor Winthrop says: "Divers 
free schools were erected, as at Eoxbury (for main- 
tenance whereof every inhabitant bound some house 
or land for a yearly allowance forever) and at Boston 
(where they made an order to allow forever £50 to 
the master and an house, and £30 to an usher, who 
should also teach to read and write and cipher, and 
Indian children were to be taught freely, and the 
charge to be by yearly contribution, either by volun- 
tary allowance, or by rate of such as refused).'^ This 
order was confirmed by the General Court. Other 
towns did the like, providing maintenance by several 
means. ^ 

But the logic of events led straight to free schools. 
The question, whether those who used the schools or 
the inhabitants of the town should maintain them in 
whole or in part, was left to those to determine who 
ordered the prudentials of the town, and these in- 
clined more and more to town support. The cost 
of the schools tended to outgrow the ability of par- 
ents and guardians to keep them up; while private 
benevolence is commonly slow when the public au- 
thorities can touch the lever of public taxation. 
The poor were unable to pay the tuition of their 
children, and discrimination between the poor and 
the rich was odious in the democratic atmosphere 
that surrounded the colony. And so the germs 
planted in 1642 and 1647 continued to grow until, 

1 History of New England, 1630-1649. Boston, 1«53, Vol. II., p. 
264. 



TWO CENTURIES OF COMMON SCHOOLS 9 

I about the middle of the eighteenth century, the 
I schools became practically free. The dame school 
I pictured in The New England Primer is proof of 
I the currency of primary teaching. 

As time wore on there was little additional school 
j legislation: the brief ordinances already enacted 
i proved in the main sufficient. In 1671 the Court 
; doubled the penalty imposed upon towns having one 
' hundred families that failed to support a Latin 
i! school, and a little later it doubled it again. In 
jl 1683 the Court enacted that every town consisting 
1 of more than five hundred families or householders 
; should set up and maintain two grammar schools 
I and two writing schools, and that the penalty im- 
posed on towns having two hundred families or 
householders that failed to comply with the require- 
ment of the law should be £20. 

Before the close of the seventeenth century, it is 
claimed, an educational declension had set in. The 
doubling on two occasions of the fine imposed upon 
towns that failed to comply with the compulsory 
law in respect to Latin schools, is significant. This 
declension is commonly ascribed to the wars with 
the Indians and the French that wasted the blood 
and treasure of the colony; the political and social 
contentions that disturbed its peace; the uncertain 
relations that existed between Massachusetts and the 
Mother Country, and internal, economic, and social 
changes. There can be no doubt, too, that the 
brightness of the early Puritan ideal had become 
dimmed. It was impossible even for the Puritans 
to resist the deteriorating influences of environment; 



10 HORACE MANN 

while in education it is always harder, other things 
being equal, to hold a large and somewhat heterogene- 
ous community up to a high standard than a small 
and select one. One of the internal changes that 
worked against the school should be particularized. 

For a century or more the schools were all town 
schools, and what is now known as the Township 
Unit System prevailed. There were no school offi- 
cers as such, but the selectmen, assisted by the 
ministers, who were real school supervisors, carried 
on the schools under the laws, subject to the in- 
structions given by the freemen in the town meet- 
ing. The typical New England town of the first 
period was a small concentration of population, with 
outlying farms and a piece of common land grouped 
around the church and schoolhouse. This organiza- 
tion tended strongly to intensify the internal life 
of the community, as well as to make it much more 
capable of resisting external attacks. Sometimes 
the public authority defined the circle within which 
houses must be built, as one or two miles of the 
meeting-house.^ 

But when the increase of the colony and the down- 

1 W. B. Weeden, Economic and Social History of Neiv England, 
Vol. I., pp. 282, 283, gives the following description : 

"Next the meetiug-honse, locally and in the hearts of the 
settlers, was the common school. The location and definition of the 
Haverhill building, about 1670, for schools and for other uses of 
the community, was a type of the system. The house was placed 
on the common land, as near the meeting-house, * which now is as 
may be.' It was to be used for schools and for a watch-house, and 
on Sabbath days for the entertainment, between services, of those 
who did not go home. It was in substance an ' annex ' of the meet- 
ing on its social side. There they taught reading, writing, arith- 



TWO CENTURIES OF COMMON SCHOOLS 11 

fall of King Philip removed or mitigated the imme- 
diate fear of danger, the growing population of the 
towns began to break ranks and scatter into the 
wilderness. Towns increased in number rapidly. 
But this was not all: the character of the towns, 
socially and economically, and to some extent politi- 
cally, began to change. The new town was not so 
much a body of population gathered about the 
meeting-house and schoolhouse, as it was a body 
of population scattered over a township. Being 
less concentrated, life was less intense and vital 
than before. For example, a single school or a 
single church no longer answered the wants of the 
people as well as it had done, and a process of 
modification set in, which naturally went much far- 
ther in the educational sphere than in the religious 
sphere. We now begin to meet the "travelling" 
school or " moving " school, which for a time gained 
a considerable prominence, and continued to the time 
of Horace Mann. The travelling school reversed the 
usual practice: the school went to the children, not 
the children to the school; that is, the single town 
school was kept a certain time in one corner of the 
town, then in another, and so on until the circuit 
had been completed, the periods that it spent in the 
different localities being equal or unequal, as circum- 
stances might determine. Even grammar schools 

metic; in some instances, Latin and Greek, and 'good manners.' 
But in most schools there was little progress beyond the elementary- 
rudiments. As in the famous Pepperell family, near Kittery Point, 
an English grammar was preserved, to show the teaching, but the 
evidences are that the pupils made scant headway in such abstruse 
learning." 



12 HORACE MANN 

circulated. This method was called "squadroning 
out" the schools.^ But this evil was light and tran- 
sient compared with those now to be mentioned. 
Soon the one central school of the town began to 
break up into a plurality of schools in the angles 
or " squadrons " of the town. Eor a time these 
schools were managed by the selectmen as before; 
but in a democratic society the portions of the town 
that had once gained schools would naturally soon 
begin to demand that their management be handed 
over to them, and just as naturally, the townships 
first, and then the Commonwealth, would in the long 
run yield to the demand. The result was the ap- 
pearance and establishment of the school district. 
At first the district was established solely for the 
purpose of bringing the school to the people, and 
of regulating school attendance, leaving control, as 
before, in the selectmen of the town; but in time 
it became fully autonomous, a body politic and cor- 
porate.^ In its rudiments the district system was 
in practical operation by the middle of the last cen- 
tury, but it was not formally legalized in Massa- 
chusetts until near its close. There can be no doubt 
that it tended to the diffusion of education, or that 
this diffusion was purchased at the cost of depth and 
thoroughness. Had the district served simply the 
first purposes that it was created to accomplish, it 
would have been much more than defensible under 



1 G. H. Martin, The Evolution of the Massachusetts Public School 
System. Boston, 1894, Lect. II. 

2 The Report of the Commissioner of Education for 1894, 1895, 
Chap. XXXIV. 



\ 



TWO CENTUEIES OF COMMON SCHOOLS 13 

existing conditions. Perhaps the system worked for 
the best as it was ; but the disruption of the central 
educational authority in the town, when it came, and 
the introduction of a plurality of authorities, en- 
tailed upon the Commonwealth serious evils which 
will claim our attention hereafter. The old system of 
town control did not disappear at once; in fact, the 
Law of 1789, soon to be mentioned, assumes that it 
is still in vigorous operation. 

In 1780 the constitution of Massachusetts was 
framed, ratified, and put in operation. It took under 
its protecting aegis the State system of education. It 
contains by far the most generous recognition of 
education found in any of the State constitutions of 
the period, and has never been outgrown. The con- 
stitution was followed, in 1789, by a revision and 
codification of the school laws, which was practi- 
cally an adaptation of the law to the existing state 
of things. The declension of this law from the stand- 
ard set by the Puritans is very marked in two par- 
ticulars. A six-months' school takes the place of 
the earlier permanent school, and two hundred fami- 
lies is substituted for one hundred in the description 
of towns required to maintain a Latin school. This 
law would have wrought great havoc, provided all 
the towns had been complying with the old require- 
ment. Under the old law two hundred and thirty 
towns out of two hundred and sixty-five were re- 
quired to maintain a Latin school; under the new 
law, only a hundred and ten.^ This was a long step 

1 Martin, Tlie Evolution of the Massachusetts Public School Sys- 
tem, Lect. III. 



14 HORACE MAKN 

in the wrong direction, and was soon followed by 
others of the same kind. 

Mr. Weeden calls the early part of the eighteenth 
century " ' the dark days ' of New England in education 
and social culture." "Schools were half neglected in 
many districts; in a few they were totally neglected. 
The daughters of men holding important offices in 
town and church were obliged often to make a mark 
instead of writing their signature. Yet in many 
places there was a dame school, and women per- 
formed important functions in education." English 
grammar was a rare science.^ Mr. Martin makes 
the more specific statement that "of women whose 
names appear in the recorded deeds of the early part 
of the eighteenth century, either as grantors of prop- 
erty or as relinquishing dower, something less than 
forty per cent sign their names ; all the others make 
their mark." ^ Towards the close of the same century 
Mr. Weeden reports that Noah Webster's Spelling 
Book was just coming into use, with Webster's Selec- 
tions, Morse's Geography, and the Youth's Preceptor. 
The Bible was the ground work of all reading. " The 
helps to the pupils being few in comparison with 
modern resources and methods, the self-help and reli- 
ance developed by this crude system of education was 
something remarkable." ^ 

1 The Economic a7id Social Condition of New England, etc., 
p. 419. 

2 The Evolution of the Massachusetts Public School System, p. 75. 

3 Reviewing the whole course of education in a typical Massa- 
chusetts town down to 1800, Mr. C. F. Adams has said: "In point 
of fact, the children were neither taught much, nor were they taught 
well; for through life the mass of them, while they could do little 



TWO CENTURIES OF COMMON SCHOOLS 15 

The American Ee volution did not, as we might 
now think it should have done, usher in an educa- 
tional revival. The war left the country too much 
exhausted, and there were too many other things to 
think of. Colleges at once began to multiply, but 
the new institutions failed to maintain the earlier 
college standard. No new ideas, inspirations, or 
enthusiasms marked the period.^ 

In respect to public schools, Massachusetts con- 
tinued on her downward course. The recognition 
of the school districts in 1789 left the powers of 
taxation and control still in the hands of the town : 
the districts served for supply only. If a district 
wanted a new schoolhouse built or an old one re- 
more in the way of writing than rudely scrawl their names, could 
never read with real ease or rapidity, and could keep accounts only 
of the simplest kind. As for arithmetical problems, the know- 
ledge of them was limited to the elementary multiplication, division, 
addition, and subtraction. None the less, after a fashion and to a 
limited extent, the Braintree school child, like the school children 
of all other Massachusetts towns, could read, could write, and could 
cipher; and for those days, as the world then went, that was 
much." — Three Episodes in Massachusetts History. Boston, 1892, 
p. 781. 

1 The Marquis de Chastellux, a member of the French Academy 
and a major-general in the French army under Count de Rocham- 
beau, travelled extensively in the United States in 1780-1782. He 
states that he found Americans suffering not a little from the reflec- 
tion which occurred frequently ; that their language was the language 
of their oppressors. This feeling '* they carried so far," the Marquis 
says, "as seriously to propose introducing a new language; and 
some persons were desirous, for the convenience of the public, that 
the Hebrew should be substituted for the English. The proposal 
was that it should be taught in the schools, and made use of in all 
public acts." — Travels in North America, etc. Translated from 
the French by an English gentleman who lived in America at that 
period. London, 1787, Vol. H., pp. 265, 266. 



16 HORACE MANN 

paired, there was nothing for it but to provide the 
means by voluntary contributions. But in 1800 the 
taxing power was conceded to the districts so far as 
providing buikling sites, schoolhouses, and furniture 
was concerned. In 1817 the districts became corpo- 
rations with the usual powers. In 1827 the districts 
gained the power to choose and contract with their 
own teachers, the power being exercised by a pru- 
dential committeeman who might be chosen in town 
meeting, but who was commonly chosen in school 
district meeting. The end of the road had now been 
reached. Democratic ideas had triumphed; and it 
was not until the Act of 1882 swept the new system 
away that the system of the Puritans was restored. 
Two limitations remained. The town still deter- 
mined the total amount of school money to be raised, 
and levied the tax; but when the money had once 
been apportioned to the districts there was no ac- 
counting and no responsibility. Legally, the certifi- 
cating of teachers still continued a town function, 
but this was more nominal than real. The district- 
ing of towns was not compulsory, and some were 
never districted. The foundation of the State school 
fund was laid in 1834. 

The results following the later legislation that has 
been recounted were both social and educational in 
character. There ensued the contentions, school poli- 
tics, irresponsibility, favoritism, small ideas, and 
wastefulness; the small schools, short terms, low 
ideals, lack of oversight, poor teachers, and poor 
teaching that have generally marked the introduc- 
tion of the Township Unit System, In 1826 the law 



TWO CENTURIES OF COMMON SCHOOLS 17 

w?.s so clianged that no town was required to main- 
tain a town high school unless it contained five 
hundred families, and then it was excused from pro- 
viding instruction in the Latin and Greek languages 
unless its population so desired. Previous to 1826 
there were one hundred and seventy-two towns in 
the State that were required to maintain schools in 
which Latin and Greek were taught; the legislation 
of that year removed the obligations from all of these 
but seven, and the seven were all maritime towns. 
Kor was Latin much taught in the schools that pro- 
fessed to teach it. The ancient and honorable name 
" grammar school " now disappeared from the Massa- 
chusetts statute book, and the name "high school" 
took its place. Verily, the State had found the 
descent to Avernus an easy one! The people of 
Massachusetts seemed almost as anxious to get rid 
of their schools as their ancestors had been to get 
them. 

In the second half of the eighteenth century there 
set in an important educational movement that was 
partly the effect and partly the cause of the decline 
of the public schools. This was the founding of 
academies. Dummer Academy was opened, in New- 
bury, in 1763, but was not incorporated until 1782. 
Other institutions of the same grade followed in 
quick succession. The first of these schools origi- 
nated in private beneficence; but about the close of 
the century the legislature adopted the policy of 
making such academies as complied with the terms 
of the law grants of wild land in the District of 
Maine, a half township each, thereby giving the 



18 HORACE MANN 

schools so favored a gitasi-public character. The 
academies may be viewed under two aspects. 

First they took the place, for the most part, that 
the decayed grammar schools no longer filled as fit- 
ting schools for college. In some counties at that 
time boys who fitted for college at home were com- 
pelled to fit themselves, with such assistance as they 
could get from the pastors of the churches. The 
academies sent to the colleges a better class of stu- 
dents than they had been receiving, thus enabling 
them to raise their acquirements for admission. 
They were also finishing schools, sending into soci- 
ety much larger numbers of pupils than they sent 
to the colleges. Upon the whole, the standard of 
the academies was probably higher than that of the 
grammar schools had been. They taught the Eng- 
lish, Latin, Greek, and French languages; writing, 
arithmetic, geography, declamation, geometry, logic, 
and natural philosophy. Some of the charters also 
embraced the clause, "And such other liberal arts 
and sciences as the trustees shall direct." On this 
side there is nothing but good to be said of the 
academies. 

But there is another side to the shield. The new 
schools hastened the decline of the old ones, and 
made their practical abolition, in 1826, possible. No 
community can emphasize two competing systems of 
education; and by as much as Massachusetts built 
up her academies, she pulled down her grammar 
schools. Besides, along with the academies a class 
of schools more distinctly private, and commonly of 
an inferior grade, sprang up. What might have 



TWO CENTURIES OF COMMON SCHOOLS 19 

been anticipated, followed: people who were able to 
pay for the scliooling of their children sent them 
to the academies and private schools, while those 
who were not able sent theirs to the public schools. 
So the schools, taken together, contributed to build 
up an odious class distinction that the old Puritans 
never would have brooked on Massachusetts soil. 
To break down this middle wall of partition was a 
part of the work of Horace Mann. 

So far as the public records show, the Pilgrims of 
Plymouth were much slower to move than the Puri- 
tans of Massachusetts Bay. The first schools, no 
doubt, were individual or associated private enter- 
prises. In 1658 the Court proposed to the several 
townships that they take into serious consideration 
the provision of a schoolmaster in every town, to 
train up the children to reading and writing, and 
five years later this recommendation was repeated. - 
In 1673 the Court voted that the charge of the free 
school, which was £30 a year, should be paid by the 
treasurer out of the profits arising from the fishery 
at Cape Cod, and the next year the grant was re- 
newed and confirmed. In 1677 the Court gave to 
the towns that should maintain a grammar school, 
taught by "any meet man," power to levy a school 
rate, and decreed a fine of £5 upon all towns of 
seventy families and upwards that should not main- 
tain such a school. Plymouth was in all w^ays a 
feebler colony than Massachusetts Bay — in educa- 
tion as in other things. The Massachusetts school 
laws were extended over Plymouth when the consoli- 
dation took place in 1691. 



20 HOKACE MANN 

II. The Other New England States 

Connecticut was an offshoot from Massactiusetts, 
and her institutions were like those of the parent 
colony, not so much by reason of imitation as by 
reason of the operation of similar causes.^ The 
founders of Connecticut were men of the same kind 
as the founders of Massachusetts Bay. In respect 
to education, the daughter followed the mother, but 
not with equal steps. Schools were established both 
at Hartford and New Haven almost at the birth of 
the two colonies, and after the union, in 1662, there 
was a single school system. From this time there 
was a continuous educational development in the 
colony. 

Connecticut was exceedingly prolific of school laws ; 
important legislation was had in 1672, 1690, and 
1750. By the time that the statutes of the Com- 
monwealth were revised in 1750, the schools were 
tending slowly downward, owing to the operation 
of causes similar to those already met with in Massa- 
chusetts. Here we encounter again the tendency to 
disintegration, whereby schools were multiplied and 
weakened. In 1766 towns and societies were au- 
thorized to divide themselves into proper and nec- 
essary districts for keeping their schools, every one 
with its own share of the public money. "By the 

1 An elaborate History of Education in Connecticut from the 
earliest times to 1854 is found in Barnard, The American Journal 
of Education, Vol. IV., pp. B57-710 ; Vol. V., pp. 115-154 ; Vol. XIII., 
725-73G ; Vol. XIV., pp. 244-275, 276-331. To these may be added the 
article on "Henry Barnard," Vol. I., pp. 659-738. For the History 
of the Connecticut Common School Fund, see Barnard, The Ameri- 
can Journal of Education, Vol. VI., pp. 367-424. 



TWO CENTUKIES OE COMMON SCHOOLS 21 

practical operation of this act," says Dr. Barnard, 
"the school system of Connecticut, instead -of em- 
bracing schools of different grades, was gradually 
narrowed down to a single district school, taught 
by one teacher in the summer and a different teacher 
in the winter, for children of all ages and in variety 
of study residing within certain territorial limits." 
This step was followed by others in the same direc- 
tion until 1798, when an act passed that substituted ' 
for the town a new corporate body known as a 
" school society " with territorial limits sometimes 
coextensive with the town, in some places embrac- 
ing part of a town, and in others parts of two or 
three towns. "For a time," Dr. Barnard says, "the 
effect of this change was not apparent, but, coupled 
with the change in the mode of supporting schools 
provided for about this time by public funds, and 
dispensing with the obligation of raising money by 
tax, the results were disastrous." The reference 
here is to the State school fund, soon to be men- 
tioned. The grammar schools ceased to be obliga- 
tory, but every school society might, by a vote of 
two-thirds of the inhabitants present in any legally 
held meeting, establish a high school for the common 
benefit of all the inhabitants, in which reading, pen- 
manship, English grammar, composition, arithmetic, 
and geography, as well as the Latin and Greek lan- 
guages, and the first ]3rinciples of religion and mo- 
rality, should be taught. 

The common schools of the Commonwealth had 
always been the main reliance of the people in re- 
spect to the rudiments of education; they were re- 



22 HOKACE MANN 

sorted to by the people generally for these studies, 
and with such success that, according to Dr. Bar- 
nard, it was rare to find a native of Connecticut 
who could not read "the Holy Word of God and the 
good laws of the State." In 1795 the legislature set 
apart the proceeds of the Western lands belonging to 
the State, $1,200,000, for a perpetual common school 
fund. This fund soon became productive, and there 
is reason to think that for a time it gave an impulse 
to popular education. Most unfortunately, however, 
the State made the fatal mistake of granting the 
money to the school districts unconditionally, in- 
stead of requiring them to match the money proceed- 
ing from the fund, dollar for dollar, with money 
raised by taxation, thus teaching the people, not to 
rely upon themselves, but rather to look to a per- 
manent fund, the income of which would either be 
stationary or tend to diminish, while the cost of 
keeping up the schools would, necessarily increase. 
A Connecticut-born man of the highest authority 
has told the result in three sentences: "Before 1837 
Connecticut surpassed the other States in the educa- 
tion of its people. But the mighty engine of super- 
vision wielded by a Horace Mann immediately turned 
the scale in favor of Massachusetts. Municipal taxa- 
tion proved a far more powerful instrument than a 
school fund, although the latter had done good ser- 
vice in its day."^ 

For a time New Hampshire and Maine were depend- 

1 Dr. W. T. Harris, preface to J. L. Pickard's School Supervision. 
See also the Report of the Committee of Twelve on Rural Schools, 
pp. 24, 25, 126, 127. 



TWO CENTURIES OF COMMON SCHOOLS 23 

encies of Massachusetts — the first until 1692, and 
the second until 1820. While they continued in this 
condition, all the Massachusetts laws applied to them ; 
but owing to various causes, as the greater distance 
from the centre of authority, the greater sparseness 
and smaller wealth of the population, and the larger 
prominence of frontier life, these laws were never as 
fully carried out as in Massachusetts proper. Still 
in a very imperfect way the characteristic educa- 
tional institutions of Massachusetts were reproduced 
in both districts — elementary schools, grammar 
schools, academies, and colleges. 

When New Hampshire came to be an independent 
government, it regularly copied the Massachusetts 
school laws; but they only existed on the statute 
books, never being enforced. In 1789 the legislat- 
ure repealed all existing acts, and passed a new 
one authorizing English grammar schools for teach- 
ing reading, writing, and arithmetic in the towns, 
and grammar schools for teaching Latin and Greek 
in the shire and half -shire towns. Jeremy Belknap, 
writing in 1792, says that formerly, when there were 
but few towns, much better care was taken to observe 
the law concerning schools than after the settlements 
were multiplied; but there was never uniform atten- 
tion paid to the matter in all places. Much depended 
upon the character and influence of the leading men 
in the town, and those who were disposed to do so 
had little difficulty in finding ways of evading the 
law.^ 

When Maine became an independent State, she con- 
1 History of Neio Hampshire. Boston, 1792, Vol. III., p. 288. 



24 HORACE MANN 

tinned to develop the educational system that had 
sprung up under the dominion of Massachusetts. 

The original population of Vermont was mainly- 
furnished by Connecticut, Massachusetts, and New 
Hampshire, the last one preponderating. The New 
Hampshire Grants gave character to the State. Natu- 
rally, therefore, we find reproduced in feeble form 
the common educational institutions of New Eng- 
land. Local initiative and control mark the first 
schools, and a purely voluntary system of education 
sprang up before there was any regular form of gov- 
ernment. The first constitution declared that a com- 
petent number of schools ought to be maintained in 
each town for' the convenient instruction of youth, 
and that one or more grammar schools ought to be 
incorporated and properly supported in each county. 
In 1794 the towns were authorized by the legislat- 
ure to levy a local tax for the support of schools, 
and measures were taken to provide an endowment 
of school lands. Three years later the legislature 
enacted that each town should support a school or 
schools; but instead of imposing a pecuniary fine for 
non-compliance, the law merely stipulated that towns 
should forfeit their right to a part of the general 
school tax. A Vermont historian, writing in 1809, 
remarks upon the attention that was paid to the edu- 
cation of children. Parents did not so much aim to 
have their children acquainted with the liberal arts 
and sciences, as to have them all taught to read with 
ease and propriety, to write a plain and legible hand, 
and to have them acquainted with the rules of arith- 
metic, so far as might be necessary to carry on the 



TWO CENTURIES OF COMMON SCHOOLS 25 

common occupations of life. He represents that 
these attainments were well-nigh universal. Enlarg- 
ing upon their practical value, he uses the following 
language : " Such kind of education and knowledge is 
of more advantage to mankind than all the specula- 
tionSj disputes, and distinctions that metaphysics, 
logic, and scholastic theology have ever produced. 
In the plain common sense promoted by the one, 
virtue, utility, freedom, and public happiness have 
their foundations. In the useless speculations pro- 
duced by the other, common sense is lost, folly be- 
comes refined, and the useful branches of knowledge 
are darkened and forgot." ^ 

Among the Kew England States, Ehode Island has 
an educational history that is peculiarly her own. 
She did not enact a common school law until the 
year 1800, and this she did not enforce, but rather 
repealed three years later. Not until 1828 was such 
a law put upon the statute book that remained 
there. But it must not be supposed that the people 
from Eoger Williams' day down were altogether un- 
schooled. Besides domestic instruction, there were 
voluntary schools carried on by individuals, associa- 
tions, or towns. Schools are mentioned from time 
to time in the town records. An annalist of Provi- 
dence, describing the state of things that existed 
towards the close of the last century, says that pre- 
vious to 1770 schools were but little thought of; 
there were in his neighborhood three small schools, 
not counting an equal number of dame schools, with 

1 Samuel Williams, History of Vermont. Burlington, 1809, Vol. 
n., pp. 370, 371. 



26 HORACE MANN 

perhaps a dozen scholars each. It was not uncom- 
mon to meet with people who could not write their 
names. ^ The causes that made the history of Rhode 
Island so unique in other particulars explain this 
singular state of affairs. 

III. General View of New England, 1780-1830 

John Adams, writing to the Abbe de Mably, in 
1782, found the key to New England history in four 
institutions: the towns, churches, schools, and mili- 
tia. After stating the terms of the law in regard to 
schools, he said: "All the children of the inhabi- 
tants, the rich as well as the poor, have a right to 
go to these public schools. There are formed the 
candidates for admission as students into colleges at 
Cambridge, New Haven, Princeton, and Dartmouth. 
In these colleges are educated future masters for 
these schools, future ministers for these congrega- 
tions, doctors of law and medicine, and magistrates 
and officers for the government of the country.'^ ^ 

1 T. B. Stockwell, Public Education in Rhode Island, Providence, 
Rhode Island, p. 11. An article entitled " Common Schools in 
Rhode Island," The North American Review, Vol. LXVII., pp. 240- 
256, 1848, contains an interesting account of the condition of educa- 
tion in that State from the earliest times. 

2 Works of John Adams, Vol. V., p. 495. Noah Webster, reply- 
ing to Dr. Priestley in 1800, wrote : " The truth seems to be that in 
the Eastern States knowledge is more diffused among the laboring 
people than in any country on the globe. The learning of the people 
extends to a knowledge of their own tongue, of writing and arith- 
metic sufficient to keep their own simple accounts ; they read not 
only the Bible and newspapers, but almost all read the best English 
authors, as the Spectator, Rambler, and the works of Watts, Dodd- 
ridge, and many others. If you can find any country in Europe 
where this is done to the same extent as in New England, I am very 
ill informed." — Horace E. Scudder, Noah Webster, p. 106. 



TWO CENTUEIES OF COMMON SCHOOLS 27 

Soon after his election to the presidency of Yale 
College, Dr. Timothy Dwight began a series of trav- 
els that extended over a number of years, in the 
course of which he visited all the principal regions 
of New England and New York; and his notes, 
written at the time for the interest of his family, 
were afterwards published. He says of the ISTew 
Englanders, as a whole, that they had established 
parochial schools at such near distances as to give 
every child, except in very recent settlements, an 
ample opportunity of acquiring the common branches. 
He claims for New England greater educational ad- 
vantages than can be accorded to any other country 
of the same wealth and population in the world. In 
his review of Connecticut, he confesses the absence 
of statistics, but from such data as he has at hand, 
he estimates that there were in the State more than 
fourteen hundred schools, with an attendance of more 
than forty thousand pupils. Children who lived near 
enough to the schoolhouse were generally sent to 
school at three years of age, but sometimes at two 
years; from eight to ten years of age many of them 
were employed, in the warm season, in the business 
of the family; while girls often left school at twelve, 
and most commonly at fourteen years of age. He 
says there was scarcely a child in the State who was 
not taught reading, writing, and arithmetic ; poverty 
had no effect to exclude any one from this degree of 
education. Every school society appointed suitable 
overseers or visitors of the schools within its limits. 
These overseers examined the instructors, displacing 
such as might be found deficient, or would not con- 



28 HORACE MANN 

form to the regulations; superintended and directed 
the instruction of the children in religion, morals, 
and manners; appointed the public exercises; visited 
the schools twice at least during each season, particu- 
larly to direct the daily reading of the Bible by such 
children as were capable of it, and their weekly in- 
struction in some approved catechism, and recom- 
mended that the master should conclude the exercises 
of each day with prayer. In the schools other in- 
structions were added to reading, writing, and keep- 
ing accounts, according to the disposition of the 
teachers and the wishes of the parents. At first 
children of both sexes were placed under the instruc- 
tion of women teachers, at a more advanced stage 
under that of men. Throughout a considerable part 
of the country the sexes were sent to different 
schools. Dr. D wight reports that there were more 
than twenty academies in Connecticut, about half of 
them incorporated, and somewhat less than half sus- 
tained by their own funds. In Massachusetts there 
were forty-eight, all incorporated and most, if not 
all of them to some extent, endowed. The District 
of Maine had its full proportional share. New 
Hampshire had a list of thirteen academies, and 
Vermont of twelve. The lack of schools in Ehode 
Island he attributed to the general causes that had 
■worked in the history of the State, and particularly 
the course that had been pursued relative to religion 
and churches.^ 

1 Travels in New England and New York. By Timothy Dwight, 
S.T.D., LL.D., late President of Yale College, etc. In four volumes, 
illustrated with maps. London, 1823, Vol, I., pp. 460, 461; Vol. 
III., pp. 54, 55 ; Vol. IV., pp. 284-287, 292, 293. 



\ 



TWO CENTURIES OE COMMON SCHOOLS 29 

Mr. James G. Carter, in two publications that 
will be described more at length, in the next chapter, 
writing in 1824-1825, gives a somewhat different view 
of matters. It does not follow, however, that popu- 
lar education has in the mean time lost ground. 
Carter's object was to reform the schools, and not 
merely to report on their condition, and he was 
therefore critical and suggestive. He says that the 
free schools of Massachusetts had received almost no 
legislative attention for forty years. They had not 
lost ground absolutely, but relatively ; they had even 
improved, but had not kept pace with the progress of 
society in other respects. There had never been a 
time when the schools of the Commonwealth were 
farther in the rear of society than now, and the ret- 
rograde movement was being accelerated. Mr. Carter 
declared that if things went on as they were going, 
twenty years longer, the institution which had always 
been the glory of New England would be extinct. 
The district schools were in session from three to six 
months in the year, and often longer. The winter 
schools were taught by men, the summer schools by 
women. The subjects taught in all the schools were 
reading, spelling, and English grammar; in the bet- 
ter schools writing, arithmetic, history, and geogra- 
phy were taught in addition. The summer schools 
ranged from twenty to forty pupils, the winter 
schools from thirty to eighty. Both sexes attended 
summer and winter; the summer schools were in- 
tended particularly for the younger children, the 
winter schools for the older ones. Maintaining a 
winter school cost six or eight dollars a week, a 



30 HORACE MANN 

summer school two or three dollars a week. The col- 
leges and academies furnished the better schools com- 
petent teachers ; but a majority of the teachers found 
in the country schools lacked experience, education, 
and professional training. A very great majority of 
them had received their own education in precisely 
such schools as those that they taught themselves. 
Mr. Carter contends stoutly that the influence of the 
academies on the free schools is very harmful. Where 
the academies flourish most the free schools flourish 
least. The property of the rich is still subject to 
taxation for school purposes, as before the academies 
appeared; but the interest of the higher classes, their 
directive intelligence, go mainly to the schools in 
which their own children are taught. The first re- 
sult is that a social differentiation begins in the 
schools of the Commonwealth; there are schools for 
the rich and schools for the poor — a state of things 
that would have been very hateful to the old Puri- 
tans. Thus the schools were sapping the foundation 
of the ancient democracy. As we shall see hereafter, 
this growing evil was one that Mr. Mann strove to 
the utmost to counteract. The State school fund of 
Connecticut had not met expectations; the common 
schools were no better than those of Massachusetts, 
if they were as good; the people had not been stimu- 
lated to tax themselves to augment the income of the 
fund.^ 

1 In his book entitled A Neiv England Boyhood, New York, 1893, 
Rev. Edward Everett Hale gives an interesting picture of school life 
in Boston in the decade 1825-1835. He attended a private school at 
first, and afterwards the Latin school. There was no thought of 
sending him to a public school ; there was no public school below 



TWO CENTURIES OE COMMON SCHOOLS 31 

In the course of the preceding pages mention has 
been made of the dame school. While considerably 
prominent, this school never attained such conspicu- 
ity in New England as in Old England. It may be 
doubted whether it would have commanded the genius 
of a ISTew England Shenstone. It was sometimes called 
a "ma'am" school. For example, Eev. Samuel J. May, 
a Unitarian minister of note in his time, born in 1797, 
reports that between the ages of five and eight years he 
attended ma'am schools in Boston.^ In 1817 as many 
as one hundred and fifty-four private schools were re- 
ported in Boston, nineteen of them taught by men and 
one hundred and thirty-five by women. The great 
majority of these private schools were dame schools. 

In some respects the education of women is a better 
judge of public education than that of men. It is 
worthy of observation that previous to 1789 girls 
were not admitted to the public schools of Boston. 
At the reorganization of the schools in that year 
they were admitted to the grammar schools,^ but not 

the Latin school to which his father would have sent him any more 
than he would have sent him to jail. 

1 Life of Samuel J. May. Boston, 1873, p. 22. 

2 The school nomenclature of Boston, and to some extent of Mas- 
sachusetts, is perplexing. (1) The Latin school and the grammar 
school of early times were the same thing. Its function has been 
described aboA^e. Li course of time the name " grammar " as applied 
to this school was dropped. (2) The writing school was created to 
meet the wants of pupils who desired to be directly fitted for busi- 
ness pursuits ; it emphasized writing, arithmetic, accounts, and pen- 
making. (3) Towards the close of the last century reading schools 
appeared which laid stress on instruction in the English language. 
(4) By 1820 the name " grammar school " was given to the writing 
and reading schools. The characteristic study was English gram- 
mar, as Latin was of the Latin school. At first the reading and 



32 HOEACE MANN 

at the same hours as the boys, and only from April 
to October of each year. 

In 1785 the school committee of Boston denied 
admission to the writing schools of children unless 
they were seven years of age. The laws of the State 
provided that youth should not be sent to the gram- 
mar schools unless they had learned to read plain 
English lessons; the laws also provided for prepara- 
tory schools where English was not taught; but fol- 
lowing the adoption of the rule of 1785 there were 
no such schools in Boston, and, accordingly, all chil- 
dren in order to prepare for the grammar schools 
were thrown back on private schools. This state 
of things continued until 1818, when, after a deter- 
mined effort on the part of the respectability of Boston 
to prevent it, the town meeting voted that primary 
schools should be established. Hundreds of children 
now flocked to these schools, which were superior to 
the competing private schools.^ What passed for 

writing schools were in separate buildings, and even when they were 
found in the same building they had each its own staff of teachers. 
The double-headed system continued until 1847, when the present 
system of grading was introduced. (5) In 1845, two years before 
these schools were consolidated, the reading schools taught reading, 
geography, and grammar as required studies, and history, natural 
philosophy, and astronomy as optional studies. In the writing 
schools writing and arithmetic were required, while algebra, geom- 
etry, and book-keeping were options. See Barnard, The American 
Journal of Education, Vol. V., p. 325; Woodbridge, American 
Journal of Education, 1826, Vol. I., p. 321 ; Annals of Education, 
Vol. IV., 1834, p. 556. The writer also acknowledges his indebted- 
ness to Mr. G. H. Martin, author of The Evolution of the Massa- 
chusetts Public School System, for personal assistance in clearing 
up this difficult subject. 

1 Annals of the Boston Primary School Committee from its First 
Establishment in 1818 to its Dissolution in 1855. Compiled by 
Joseph N. Wightman. Boston, 1860, pp. 58, 59. 



TWO CENTURIES OF COMMON SCHOOLS 33 

good primary teaching in Boston in 1820, at least 
with one very intelligent man, can be learned from 
Mr. Elisha Ticknor's report of an official visitation 
that he made to some of these primary schools in 
that year. He says a child six years of age repeated 
to him from the spelling book between fifty and sixty 
rules, being all it contained, in relation to letters and 
pronunciation. He was surprised by this remarkable 
display of memory and attention, and says the child 
appeared at the same time to understand the rules. The 
teacher assured him that no child was allowed to pass 
from the second class to the first one who was incapable 
of this feat. There is much more to the same effect.^ 
Any account of education in Xew England would 
be incomplete that omitted The New England Primer. 
which for several generations did more to form the 
minds of youth than any other book except the Bible. 
With its cuts, poetical selections, Bible facts, brief 
biographies of ancient worthies, verses, and precepts 
it was admirably adapted to make a deep impres- 
sion upon the minds of children; but such an impres- 
sion as few parents called intelligent would to-day 
look upon with favor. The Primer was the strong- 
hold of the Calvinistic theology. Still further it was 
reinforced by The Assembly's Shoi'ter Catechism, in 
which the minister questioned the pupils at recurring 
intervals. 

IV. The Other States 

There are two reasons why the larger parts of the 
Union can be passed lightly over in this history. 

1 Annals of the Boston Primary School Committee, p. 59. 



34 HORACE MANN 

One is, that outside of New England we do not meet 
witli a single public school system until this century 
was well opened, and the other, that Horace Mann 
built on the Massachusetts foundation. It does not 
follow, however, that there was no elementary educa- 
tion in the other States because they had no public 
elementary schools. When men come habitually to 
associate certain effects with certain causes exclu- 
sively, they are apt to conclude that in all cases 
where these causes are absent, the familiar effects do 
not exist. This is a great fallacy. No doubt there 
was more instruction in the old Middle and Southern 
States, for example, than we, accustomed to our 
present methods of education, would at first think 
possible. 

Still it cannot be doubted that, down to the be- 
ginning of the Common School Kevival, the other 
States were all far in the rear of Massachusetts 
and Connecticut. For this there were many reasons, 
some external and some internal. Nowhere outside 
of New England do we find that intense town life 
which did so much to stimulate men's minds, includ- 
ing schools and learning. And nowhere else, save 
among the Scotch-Irish of the frontiers, did the pre- 
vailing type of religious belief and ecclesiastical or- 
ganization tend so strongly to diffuse intelligence 
and promote education. There was a wide interval 
between the planters of the South, for instance, and 
the farmers, lawyers, ministers, and tradesmen of the 
New England States. Learning held no such place in 
the mind of the one as in the mind of the other. 
The typical Virginian was a man of vigorous facul- 



TWO CENTURIES OF COMMON SCHOOLS 35 

ties, knowledge of the world, force of character, and 
book education sufficient for his purposes; he bore 
himself well on the plantation and in the hunting 
field, in the vestry meeting, at the hustings, and in 
the House of Burgesses; but he was no theologian, 
dialectician, or scholar. He was a Protestant, indeed, 
but he belonged to the Established Church, which was 
always sluggish in respect to popular education as 
compared with the more vigorous dissenting bodies 
that have done such great things for education on 
the Continent, in Great Britain, and in the United 
States. Finally, at the South slavery was an impor- 
tant factor that the historian who treats the subject 
thoroughly must deal with. 

The means of education employed in the different 
States now under consideration were not very dis- 
similar. Governor Berkeley, of Virginia, replying to 
a question sent out by the Commissioners of Planta- 
tions in 1670, relative to the instruction of children 
in religion, threw out a suggestion that is of wide 
application, applying, no doubt, to secular as well as 
religious teaching. He said the same course was 
taken as in England outside of the towns, "Every 
man according to his ability instructing his children." 
Persons who were able to do so often engaged private 
tutors for their children. Others associated them- 
selves together for the purpose of carrying on sub- 
scription schools. Andrew Bell, afterwards known to 
fame as the author of " The Madras System of Educa- 
tion," taught the learned languages in Virginia, in both 
a private and public capacity, in the years 1774-1781. 
Bell, it may be observed, vindicated his nationality 



36 HORACE MANN 

by accumulating £900 by teaching and speculating in 
tobacco and American currency, and his High Church 
and Tory principles by speaking ill of the country 
after he had left it. Southern gentlemen sometimes 
owned the teachers of their children: convicts or in- 
dentured persons whom they purchased of the skippers 
that laid them down in the harbors. There is an old 
story, not very well authenticated, that Washington 
received his early lessons from a convict servant 
whom his father had bought in the market.^ The 
ministers of the churches often eked out their slender 
salaries and contributed to the enlightenment of their 
several communities by teaching school, and, perhaps 
still oftener, by teaching private pupils. 

In education, as in other things, necessity is the 
mother of invention. In education, too, as in other 
things, general conditions assert themselves. Inter- 
esting examples, falling under both these observations, 
are furnished by types of schools that appeared at 
different times in different parts of the country. The 
" log colleges " of the Scotch-Irish, the " neighborhood 
schools " of Pennsylvania, and the " old field schools " 
of Georgia offer attractive features to the student of 
social life, as well as to the student of educational 
history. Indeed, the typical pioneer school is an 
object of much artistic as well as educational interest. 

But it must not be supposed that west and south of 
the Hudson River the means of education were limi- 
ted to such imperfect and precarious agencies as have 
been described — that there were no schools at once 
well organized and permanent. Most, if not all, of 
1 Paul Leicester Ford, The True George Washington, -p. 60. 



TWO CENTURIES OF COMMON SCHOOLS 37 

the States did something in some way for education. 
Some of them made grants of land for schools; some 
provided that escheats should inure to the benefit of 
learning. The oldest school in the country to-day is 
the School of the Collegiate Reformed Dutch Church 
in the city of New York, which was founded in 
1633, and thus antedates the Boston Latin School 
four years. ^ The Dutch, and afterwards the English, 
founded schools in the towns of New York. South 
Carolina, perhaps on account of her Huguenot popu- 
lation, took a more active interest in education than 
some of the other States. A free school, in the old 
English sense of the word, is met with in Charleston 
in 1712. Philadelphia boasts of one or more schools 
that count their years from the days of William Penn. 
It is also to be observed that the New England men 
who flowed into the northern part of this State, and 
founded Westmoreland just after the French and Ind- 
ian War, established a school system like the one 
that they had left behind them, which afterwards ex- 
erted a beneficial influence upon the course of school 
legislation. Previous to the opening of the new era 
New Jersey has little to offer to our consideration, 
and yet she is the only State that, previous to the 
Revolution, had founded two colleges, — Nassau Hall, 
now Princeton University, and Queens College, now 
Rutgers. More than in the Middle States, and far 
more than in New England, fathers south of Mason 
and Dixon's Line sent their sons to Europe to be edu- 

1 History of the School of the Collegiate Reformed Dutch Church 
in the City of New York from 1633-1883. By authority of Con- 
sistory. Second edition revised and enlarged. New York, 1883. 



38 HORACE MANN 

cated. Nor was it by any means uncommon for them 
to send their daughters also. The motives that oper- 
ated to bring this about were religious zeal, interest 
in the old home, dearth of educational opportunity in 
the new home, and professional ambition. Young 
men, fitting for the professions of law and medicine, 
resorted to the English and Scottish schools in con- 
siderable numbers. Fifteen of the eighty-nine men 
who set their names to the Declaration of Indepen- 
dence and the Constitution of the United , States, not 
counting the three of foreign birth and breeding, had 
studied in Europe ; and it is significant that only one 
of the number, Benjamin Rush, of Philadelphia, rep- 
resented a Northern State. ^ Charleston, South Caro- 
lina, sent more students across the ocean than any 
other equal population on the Continent. 

The Washingtons belonged to the Northern Neck 
of Virginia, which is said to have sent more youth 
abroad for schooling than any other section of Vir- 
ginia. George Washington's father and elder broth- 
ers were taught at Appleby School, England, and 
there is every reason to suppose that George himself 

1 The following are the names of the eighteen men : Charles Car- 
roll of Carrollton, Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, John Dickinson, 
Edward Rutledge, John Rutledge, Benjamin Rush, Thomas Nelson, 
Jr., Arthur Lee, Richard Henry Lee, Wm. Paca, John Witherspoon, 
James Wilson, Thomas Hayward, Jr., Thomas Lynch, Jr., Arthur 
Middleton, Button Gwinett, John Blair, Robert Morris. Mr. Colyer 
Meriwether publishes a list of 114 Americans who were admitted to 
the Inns of Court, London, as members between 1759 and 1785. 
They are distributed as follows by States, not counting the 10 who 
are simply entered as " Americans " : South Carolina, 44 ; Georgia, 
3; North Carolina, 1; Virginia, 20; Maryland, 17; Pennsylvania, 
10; New Jersey, 1; New York, 5; Massachusetts, 3. — History of 
the Higher Education in South Carolina. Washington, 1889. 



TWO CENTURIES OF COMMON SCHOOLS 39 

would have gone there had not his father's death pre- 
vented. What he and the country lost, or gained, by 
the failure, if anything, suggests a curious subject for 
speculation. 

In some of the States a quickening of interest 
in common schools accompanied, or soon followed, the 
Eevolution. Mr. Jefferson's grand scheme, brought 
forward in 1776, was a melancholy failure, owing to 
the fact that Virginia was not ready for it. Still fur- 
ther, the law of 1796 was mainly ineffective because its 
provisions in regard to school supply were permissive 
when they should have been mandatory. The Virginia 
Literary Fund, a small common school endowment, 
dates from 1810. South Carolina created in 1811 the 
rudiments of a system of public schools, which con- 
tinued until the Civil War. New York began to move 
slowly at first, but afterwards with a vigor that made 
partial amends for her past delinquency. Governor 
George Clinton urged the subject of education upon 
the legislature in 1787, and the Eegents of the Uni- 
versity of the State of New York were incorporated 
in that year. State lands were voted to schools two 
years later. In 1795 Governor Clinton urged the es- 
tablishment of common schools throughout the State, 
and the legislature made, for five successive years, an 
annual appropriation of fifty thousand dollars for that 
purpose. When President Dwight visited New York, 
early in the century, he found no system of school 
education, nor anything which resembled such a sys- 
tem. He speaks of several charity schools belonging 
to the various churches, and mentions a school on the 
Lancasterian plan, conducted under the patronage 



40 HOEACE MANN 

of the city corporation and containing, at different 
times, from five to seven hundred scholars. Eor the 
rest, he says schools were generally established in 
the following manner: "An individual, sometimes a 
liberally educated student, having obtained the proper 
recommendations, offers himself to some of the inhabi- 
tants as a schoolmaster. If he is approved and pro- 
cures a competent number of subscribers, he hires a 
room and commences the business of instruction. 
Sometimes he meets with little, and sometimes with 
much, encouragement." ^ Still, from this time onward, 
we are able to trace a slow but steady progress. The 
State common school fund and the society afterward 
known as the Public School Society of the City of 
New York were both founded in 1805. In 1813 a 
State superintendent of common schools was ap- 
pointed — the first officer of the kind in the country. 
Governor De Witt Clinton recommended a local visi- 
torial authority over the schools in 1826, and his rec- 
ommendation bore fruit in the local superintendency, 
or its equivalent, established somewhat later. 

The opening up of the West affected educational 
history in many ways. It created a vast educational 
need and supplied some new conditions. The Na- 
tional Government adopted the policy of devoting one 
thirty-sixth part of the wild lands in all the public 
land States to common schools, and of making each 
State a generous endowment for higher institutions of 
learning. This prime fact is jiever to be forgotten 
when dealing with Western education. Naturally, 
the people that flowed into the West carried with 
1 Travels in New England and Neio YorTc, Vol. IV., p. 443. 



TWO CENTURIES OF COMMON SCHOOLS 41 

tliem the ideas and institutions to which they had 
been habituated in their earlier homes — a fact that 
will enable us to despatch the new States in a few 
paragraphs. 

Kentucky and Tennessee followed in the footsteps 
of Virginia and the Carolinas^ but with a quicker 
stride. Many of their first inhabitants were Scotch- 
Irish from beyond the mountains, who were devoted 
to their ancestral religious and educational ideas. 
Academies, seminaries, colleges, universities even, 
appeared simultaneously with the establishment of 
civilization. Judge Hall relates in his JRomance of 
Western History that the classical school sprang up at 
once in the wilderness ; that " in rude huts were men 
teaching not merely the primer, but expounding the 
Latin poets, and explaining to future lawyers and 
legislators and generals the severe truths of moral 
and mathematical science."^ Private schools were 
numerous in both States. The academies, seminaries, 
and colleges even must have furnished much element- 
ary instruction; for it is impossible to believe that 
the ten colleges with 1419 students that Kentucky 
reported to the Census Bureau in 1840 were, most of 
them, colleges in anything but name. Both States 
were slow to build up common school systems, and 
neither one can be said to have accomplished any- 
thing worthy of the name before the great educa- 
tional revival had fully set in. "Here, more than 
elsewhere," says Professor Shaler, dealing with edu- 
cation in Kentucky, "we see the vicious system of 

1 W. H. Venable, Beginnings of Literal^ Culture in the Ohio 
Valley, pp. 183, 184. 



42 HORACE MANN 

county government by whicli the South is cursed — 
an evil that even as much as slavery has served to 
retard advancement in educational methods."^ 

Ohio had a greater variety of population, and so a 
greater variety of ideas and institutions, than her sis- 
ter States at the South. She put in her first constitu- 
tion the immortal declaration of the Ordinance of 
1787, that schools and the means of education should 
forever be encouraged. Still, beyond taking steps to 
preserve and utilize the school lands, found the two 
State universities, and pass acts authorizing the incor- 
poration of school societies, the legislature did noth- 
ing for education until 1821. All this time the people 
were wholly dependent upon voluntary agencies for 
the teaching of their children — private schools, 
academies, and the like. In the year just named 
the legislature authorized the division of townships 
into school districts, the appointment of school com- 
mittees, and the imposition of a limited tax upon 
property for school purposes. School lots might be 
bought and schoolhouses erected at public expense. 
For teachers' salaries, the rate bill was the great reli- 
ance, but the committees might apply public funds to 
paying the charges of pupils whose parents were too 
poor to pay them. While this act was permissive, 
not mandatory, it laid the foundation of the State 
system of public instruction. New grants of power, 
accompanied by mandatory provisions, followed in due 
course of time. The public schools of Cincinnati were 
organized in 1829 under a special act, and four years 



1 Kentucky, in the American Commonwealth Series, p. 397. 



l! 



TWO CENTURIES OF COMMON SCHOOLS 43 

later they counted 2000 pupils to 1230 reported in 
private schools.^ 

The iirst constitution of Indiana, 1816, is note- 
worthy for two reasons. It was the first State con- 
stitution to throw its aegis over the public school 
lands, as it was the first to declare that the legis- 
lature, as soon as circumstances would permit, should 
provide by law for a general system of education, 
ascending in regular gradation from township schools 
to a State university, where tuition should be gratis 
and equally open to all. While there is earlier legis- 
lation relating to education, some of it dating from 
Territorial days, the first real effort to establish a 
State system of instruction was made in 1824. Be- 
fore this time, and after it too, until the State system 
had been formed, the educational facilities of Indiana 
were like those already met with in the South and West. 

One fact of much significance relating to the Eevo- 
lutionary era should receive due mention. Six of 
the States (counting Vermont) incorporated educa- 
tional articles in the constitutions that they adopted 
in consonance with the advice of Congress, Pennsyl- 
vania leading the way.^ These articles do not, how- 
ever, appear to have been followed by appropriate 
legislation. After a sharp struggle the following 
article, which was practically a reaffirmation of the 
earlier one, was placed in the Constitution of Penn- 
sylvania in 1790: "The legislature shall, as soon as 



1 W. H. Venable, Beginnings of Literary Culture in the Ohio 
Valley, pp. 421, 424, 425. 

2 These provisions will be found grouped in The Report of the 
Commissioner of Education for 1892, 1893, Vol. II., pp. 1312-1317. 



44 HOEACE MANN 

conveuiently may be, provide by law for the estab- 
lishment of schools throughout the State, in such 
manner that the poor may be taught gratis." Natu- 
rally enough, this clause gave rise to a class 
of public schools that were nicknamed " charity " 
schools and "pauper " schools, because they taught the 
children of the poor gratuitously, while requiring the 
rich and the well-to-do who patronized them to pay 
tuition fees. Experience shows that schools con- 
ducted on this basis will be despised by rich and 
poor alike. The experiment was tried in the early 
years of the Common School Kevival by other States 
than Pennsylvania, and always with like results. 
The schools were despised because they were poor 
and for the poor, and they were poor because they 
were despised. The American public school is per- 
haps the most democratic of American institutions, 
and it cannot safely discriminate between man and 
man. The friends of popular education in Pennsyl- 
vania, determined to rid the State schools of the offen- 
sive labels, agitated the subject unceasingly, and in 
1834 their labors were rewarded by the passage of the 
Free School Act, with which the history of education 
in the State takes a new departure.^ 

While the first constitutional provisions were bar- 
ren of immediate results, later ones were very fruit- 
ful. In time every State, old and new, assigned to 
education a status in its fundamental law. This fact 

1 J. P. Wickersham, A History of Education in Pennsylvania, 
Private and Public, Elementary and Higher, from the Time of the 
Swedes settled on the Delaware to the Present Day. Lancaster, 
Pennsylvania, 1886. Sydney George Fisher, The Making of Penn- 
sylvania, etc. Philadelphia, 1896, pp. 119-124. 



TWO CENTURIES OF COMMON SCHOOLS 45 

is closely connected with one of the most pronounced 
features of modern education ; that is, its secularizing 
tendency. In the Colonial time the common schools 
of New England were closely affiliated with the 
Church. The clergy used them, as they used their 
pulpits, and probably more effectively, as means of 
propagating their theological system. In the other 
States also education had a strong ecclesiastical basis. 
The educational provisions incorporated in the early 
constitutions mark the beginning of the transition 
from the old to the new order of things. They are 
an intimation, no doubt half unconscious at the time, 
that the State is about to take exclusive charge of the 
public school and make it a distinctly civil institu- 
tion. The clause in the school law of Massachusetts, 
requiring resident ministers of the Gospel to use 
their best endeavors, that the youth of the towns 
shall regularly attend the schools, is the sole survi- 
val to the clergy of an educational function imposed 
by law that was once greater than the function exer- 
cised by civil officers.^ 

1 Much information relating to the state of education in the 
United States at the close of the last century will be found in the 
following work: An Historical, Geographical, Commercial, and 
Philosophical View of the American United States and of the 
European Settlements in America and the West hidies. By W. 
Winterhotham. In four volumes. London, 1795. 



CHAPTER II 

HOEACE MANN'S FORERUNNERS 

Frederic Harrison tells us in one of his able 
essays that, in all human affairs, there is this pecul- 
iar quality: "They are the work of the combined 
labors of many. ISTo statesman or teacher can do any- 
thing alone. He must have the minds of those he is 
to guide prepared for him. They must concur, or he 
is powerless. In reality he is but the expression of 
their united wills and thoughts." ^ This is just as true 
of educational movements as of any others. It must 
not therefore for a moment be imagined that the great 
educational revival in the United States came unher- 
alded — that Horace Mann had no John the Baptist. 
On the other hand, for twenty years or more before his 
advent as an educational reformer, a definite prepa- 
ration for such a revival had been going on. Indeed, 
the revival had already distinctly begun. It will be 
the aim of this chapter to name the principal of Mr. 
Mann's precursors, and briefly to characterize their 
work. 

The writer of an "Essay on the Importance of 
Studying the English Language Grammatically," pub- 
lished in The Massachusetts Magazine for June, 1789, 
threw out one notable suggestion. He argued that, 

1 The Meaning of History, p. 19. 
46 



HORACE MANN'S FORERUNNERS 47 

because tlie Latin schools maintained by the towns of 
Massacbusetts in pursuance of law were seldom at- 
tended by more than three or four boys studying the 
learned languages, and because these boys were the 
only persons to reap any direct benefit from the great 
expense incurred, therefore these schools should be 
annihilated, and that there be established in every 
county in the State a public grammar school in which 
English grammar, Latin, Greek, rhetoric, geography, 
mathematics, etc., should be taught by an able pre- 
ceptor in order to fit young gentlemen for college and 
school teaching. He urged that this preceptor, to- 
gether with the school board of overseers, should 
examine every young gentleman designed for a school- 
master in reading, writing, arithmetic, ' and English 
grammar, and that those whom they found qualified 
for the office of school teaching, and able to teach 
these branches with ease and propriety, they should 
recommend for this purpose. If this was done, a 
worthy class of teachers would soon be forthcoming. 
This article led to nothing, and the only reason for 
mentioning it here is that it is the first suggestion 
of the kind found in our educational annals.^ 

In 1816 Denison Olmstead, afterwards professor of 
natural philosophy and astronomy in Yale College, on 
taking his Master's degree at that institution, delivered 

1 This article was anonymous, but Dr. Barnard supposes that it 
was written by Mr. Elisha Ticknor, father of the distinguished 
scholar and teacher, Professor George Ticknor, who will soon be 
mentioned in his own right. — The American Journal of Education, 
Vol. n., p. 2; Vol. XVI., p. 25. See also J. P. Gordy, The Rise and 
Groioth of the Normal School Idea. Washington, 1891, p. 9, and 
Horace Mann's Common School Journal, Vol. IV., p. 169. 



48 HORACE MANN 

an oration entitled " The State of Education in Connect- 
icut," in which he urged the desirability of the State's 
establishing a seminary for schoolmasters, where gra- 
tuitous instruction should be furnished. The young 
Master of Arts worked out his plan in full, describ- 
ing the organization of the proposed school, the in- 
structors and the students, the curriculum, and the 
ends to be kept steadily in view. These ends were 
two in number. The pupils were to study and recite 
whatever they were afterwards to teach, partly for the 
purpose of acquiring a more perfect knowledge of 
these subjects, and partly for learning how to teach 
from the methods pursued and recommended by the 
principal. Ample instruction was also to be given 
by the principal in school organization and govern- 
ment. This scheme did not look beyond provid- 
ing teachers for common schools. It will be seen 
that it formally recognizes professional instruction; 
in the previous plan this element is recognized only 
by implication. But for the time nothing practical 
came of Olmstead's ideas. ^ 

The year 1823 was a fruitful one, both in thought 
and experiment. Professor J. L. Kingsley, of Yale 
College, contributed to the April number of The North 
American Review an article on the " Connecticut School 
Fund," in which he subjected the education actually 
furnished in the common schools to thorough exami- 
nation and severe criticism, and urged that something 
should be done for the better preparation of teachers. 

1 Barnard, The American Journal of Education, Vol. V., pp. 367- 
372 ; Gordy, The Rise and Gro.wJh of the Normal School Idea, pp. 
10, 11. 



HORACE MANN'S FORERUNNERS 49 

He recommended the establishment of a superior school 
in every county of the State, intermediate between 
the common schools and the university, where those 
who aspired to teach in the common schools might 
themselves be first thoroughly instructed. In August 
of the same year, Mr. William Russell, then princi- 
pal of an academy in Kew Haven, put forth a pam- 
phlet entitled Suggestions on Education, in which he 
pointed out the great defects of the schools, teachers, 
and instruction, and joined with Olmstead and Kings- 
ley in urging the provision of instruction expressly 
for the purpose of preparing teachers for their work.^ 
The practical experiment that the year 1823 wit- 
nessed was tried at Concord, Vermont, by Eev. Sam- 
uel R. Hall. Mr. Hall was sent to Concord as a 
missionary by the Domestic Missionary Society, and 
when urged to remain among the people as a minister, 
lie consented to do so only on the condition that he 
should be permitted to open a school for the benefit 
of intending teachers. He was wholly without pro- 
fessional helps of any kind, and was obliged to rely 
upon his own resources and to pioneer his own way. 
He brought into his school a class of young pupils, 
that he might practically illustrate to his intending 
teachers his ideas of teaching and government. In 
the course of a few years the oral instruction that he 
was accustomed to give in this school grew into a 
book on teaching.^ In his preface Mr. Hall speaks 

1 Barnard, Normal ScJiools, p. 9; Gordy, The Rise and Groioth 
of the Normal School Idea, p. 11. 

2 The first edition of this work bore the title-page, Lectures on 
Schoolkeeping . By Samuel R. Hall. Boston : Published by Richard- 



60 HORACE MANN 

of the very imperfect preparation of teachers for their 
work, and says institutions could be established for 
educating teachers where they should not only be 
taught the necessary branches of literature, but be 
made acquainted with the science of teaching and 
the mode of governing a school. The book contains 
no pedagogical science, as we understand the phrase, 
but is devoted throughout to the most elementary 
practical instruction in the art of teaching. The 
author lays much stress on teaching "objects, and there 
is evidence that he had a slight acquaintance with the 
work of Pestalozzi. He quotes a short passage from 
Madame de Stael, showing how the Swiss reformer 
managed his school through interest and pleasure. 
In its numerous editions this work had a wide cir- 
culation. The State of New York purchased ten 
thousand copies, with the view of supplying a copy to 
every school district in the State. The revised edi- 
tion contained a new lecture on schoolhouses, in which 
may be found some humorous descriptions of houses 
that were in actual use. One master says the temple 
of learning in which he taught afforded a fine oppor- 
tunity to winnow grain, for strong currents of wind 
constantly passed through it in all directions; twenty 
panes of glass were broken or gone, and a man might 
thrust his head through the holes; the few crazy 
desks and rickety seats furnished fine accommodations 
for writing; the fireplace was about as large as a vol- 

son, Lord, and Holbrook. The fourth edition, 1833, is entitled, 
Lectures to Schoolmasters on Teaching. In the mean time the book 
had been revised and enlarged. It was published by Carter and 
Hendee, Boston. 



HORACE MANN'S FORERUNNERS 51 

canons crater, and when it was filled with wood, well 
ignited, an ox might be roasted before it with little 
inconvenience. 

In 1830 Mr. Hall removed to Andover, Massachu- 
setts, and still later to Plymouth, New Hampshire, 
in both of which places he conducted schools for the 
preparation of teachers. He deserves this somewhat 
extended notice because in his own field he was a 
pioneer.^ 

In 1825 Rev. Thomas H. Gallaudet published, in a 
Hartford newspaper, a series of educational essays 
that were soon gathered into a pamphlet of forty 
pages, entitled Plari of a Seminary for the Instruc- 
tion of Youth. He proposed that an institution 
should be established in every State for the express 
purpose of training candidates for the work of teach- 
ing the common branches of an English education. 
These essays attracted much attention at the time, and 
were afterwards republished, more or less abridged, 
in leading educational journals. Mr. Gallaudet said 
the professors of the institution should devote them- 
selves to the theory and practice of education, and 
should prepare, deliver, and publish lectures on the 
subject. An experimental school was an integral 
part of the plan.^ 

We have now reached a time when it is no longer 
necessary to pass over a series of years to find matter 
pertinent to our purpose. From this time forward 

1 Barnard, The American Journal of Education, Vol. V., pp. 
373-385 ; Vol. XVI., p. 146. 

2 Barnard, The American Journal of Education, Vol. I., p. 417; 
Vol. X., p. 16; Gordy, The Rise and Growth of the Normal School 
Idea, p. 14. 



52 HORACE MANN 

almost every year adds something of interest and 
value to the story. We shall, therefore, be obliged 
to proceed more summarily than heretofore in deal- 
ing with the matter that crowds upon our attention. 
First, however, the one man who did more to cast up 
a highway for Horace Mann than any other must 
receive a somewhat extended notice. T.his is Mr. 
James G. Carter, to whom Dr. Barnard says, " More 
than to any other one person belongs the credit of 
having first attracted the attention of the leading 
minds of Massachusetts to the necessity of imme- 
diate and thorough improvement in the system of free 
or public schools, and having clearly pointed out the 
most direct and thorough mode of procuring that im- 
provement by providing for the training of competent 
teachers for these schools." 

Mr. Carter was born at Leominster, Massachusetts, 
in 1795, and was bred up a farmer's son. He worked 
his own way through the academy and college, gradu- 
ating from Harvard in 1820. He was a fellow-stu- 
dent and personal friend of Warren Colburn,^ whose 
well-known text-books gave such an impetus to the 
study of arithmetic, and through arithmetic to the 

1 An extended biographical sketch of AVarren Colburn will be 
found in Barnard, The American Journal of Education, Vol. II., 
pp. 294r-316. Colburn's book entitled Intellectual Arithmetic upon 
the Inductive Method of Instruction, known also as The First 
Lessons, was published in the year 1821. Professor Cajori calls 
this book the first American fruit of Pestalozzian ideas in teaching 
arithmetic. The same writer says the blackboard was introduced 
into this country early in this century by Frenchmen. — The His- 
tory and Teaching of Mathematics, pp. 106, 117. A reference to the 
early use of the blackboard will be found in Rev. S. J. May's ad- 
dress entitled, " The Revival of Education," pp. 15, 16. 



HORACE MANN'S EORERUNNERS 53 

common schools. He continued to teach for a num- 
ber of years after his graduation, and soon began to 
write for newspapers on educational subjects. To 
ability, scholarship, character, and interest in the 
subject he added as qualifications for such work, a 
thorough practical knowledge of the elementary and 
secondary schools of New England. In 1824 there 
appeared from his pen a pamphlet that is incompa- 
rably the best existing mirror of education in New 
England in the first quarter of this century.^ 

Carter contends that the two principal causes which 
have operated against the free schools are bad teachers 
and bad text-books. He does not think that the in- 
competency of teachers is due to the negligence or 
indifference of the public so much as to the competi- 
tion of business and professional life, which tends to 
prevent young men from becoming professional teach- 
ers. The men teachers may be divided into three 
classes : (1) Those who think teaching is easier and 
possibly a little more remunerative than common 
labor. (2) Those who are acquiring, or have acquired, 
a good education, and who take up teaching as a tem- 
porary employment, either to earn money for pressing 
necessities or to give themselves time to choose de- 
liberately a regular profession. (3) Those who, con- 
scious of weakness, despair of distinction or even the 
means of subsistence by other means. ^ 

1 Letters to the Honorable William Prescott, LL.D., on the Free 
Schools of New England, loith Remarks upon the Principles of In- 
struction. Boston: Published by Cummings, Hilliard & Co., 1824, 
p. 123. 

2Eev. S. J. May, a school examiner in a Connecticut town in 
1822 and the years following, writes as follows : " I well remember 



64 HORACE MANN 

But Mr. Carter did not stop here. A few months 
later he contributed to a Boston journal a series of 
essays that dealt very largely, with the same topics, 
and these essays were soon gathered up into a small 
volume.^ Attention is again drawn to the incompe- 
tency of teachers, and the method of certificating them 
is particularly examined. The law of 1789, which 
committed the examination of teachers to the ministers 
in connection with the selectmen of the towns, worked 
very well while there was but one religious denomi- 
nation and one minister in a town; but now, owing 
to the multiplication of ministers growing out of the 
division of parishes, the growth of sects, and the low- 
ering of the average standard of ministerial educa- 
tion, it works very unsatisfactorily. For example, 
if there are six ministers in the same town of dif- 
ferent characters, denominations, and qualifications, 
some of them perhaps hardly qualified to teach a 
common school themselves, how shall the matter be 
managed? A minister of one denomination may cer- 
tify to the qualifications of a teacher whose constitu- 
ency are of another denomination; while a minister 
in one corner of the town may certificate a teacher 

that one winter, for the nine schools in the small town where I lived, 
we rejected six out of fifteen applicants, because they did not under- 
stand notation and numeration, could not write correctly simple 
sentences of good English, and knew no more of the geography of 
the earth than of the ' Mecanique Celeste ' ; and yet they had come 
to us well recommended as having taught schools acceptably in other 
towns one, two, and three winters." — The Revival of Education. 
Syracuse, 1855. 

1 Essays upon Popular Education, containing a Particular Ex- 
amination of the Schools of Massachusetts and an Outline of an 
Institution for the Education of Teachers. By James G. Carter. 
Boston : Bowles and Deerman, 1826. 



HORACE MANN'S FORERUNNERS 55 

in another corner. Then the ministers sometimes 
stand in awe of candidates or of the families to 
which they belong, fearing to offend them; strife and 
bitterness are thus introduced into the churches, so 
that the existing system works mischief in the eccle- 
siastical sphere, as well as in the educational sphere. 
But the essay that gives character to this publica- 
tion is the last one, entitled " Outlines of an Institu- 
tion for the Education of Teachers." It is distinctly 
creative in character. In nothing that had appeared 
from the press thus far had this subject been so care- 
fully thought out and presented, so far as the United 
States are concerned, as in this celebrated essay. 
It justifies the title that George B. Emerson be- 
stowed upon the author, "Father of Normal Schools." 
Mr. Carter contends that insufficient stress has been 
laid upon the professional preparation of teachers. 
A teacher must know how to impart knowledge. Edu- 
cation is a science and must be taught as such. To 
do this work, the State should found and support an 
institution that would be free to all its pupils. This 
institution should embrace (1) an appropriate library 
and philosophical apparatus; (2) a principal and as- 
sistant-professors in the different departments; (3) a 
school for children of different ages, embracing both 
those desiring a general education and those fitting 
for teachers ; (4) a board of commissioners represent- 
ing the interests and the wishes of the public. The 
proposed institution would set the standard of quali- 
fications for teachers, and would give stability, influ- 
ence, and dignity to the teaching profession. The 
proposed school bears no distinctive name ; the words 



56 HORACE MANN 

" normal " and " normal school " do not occtir in the 
essay, nor is there any recognition whatever of simi- 
lar schools that have been founded in Europe. In a 
footnote to one of the letters to Prescott, Mr. Car- 
ter gives sop-ie account of Pestalozzi, drawing his in- 
formation from The Edinburgh Revieio and a work on 
Switzerland. The philosophers whom he mentions 
are Stewart, Locke, and Dr. Watts. We shall meet 
Carter again. A bill that he prepared embodying his 
ideas was introduced into the legislature in 1827, and 
failed of passing only by a single vote in the senate.^ 

Mr. Carter's two pamphlets attracted immediate 
attention. Professor George Ticknor reviewed the 
Letters to Prescott, in The North American Review, 
and Dr. Orville Dewey the Essays upon Popular 
Education, in the same periodical. Theophilus Par- 
sons reviewed the Letters in The Literary Gazette. 
These reviews were all highly commendatory. The 
United States Review also contained an article on Mr. 
Carter's institution for the education of teachers, 
the writer of which says that the country schools 
are everywhere degraded, and that they stand so 
low in the estimation of their warmest friends that 
it is thought a mean thing for any man but the me- 
chanic, the artisan, or the laborer, to send his chil- 
dren to them for an education. 

The revival of education was not confined to the 
region east of Hudson Eiver. In 1825 Mr. Walter 
R. Johnson, of Germantown, Pennsylvania, published 
a pamphlet called Observations on the Improvement 

1 Barnard, The American Journal of Education, Vol. X., p. 212, 
et seq. 



I 



HORACE MANN'S FORERUNNERS 57 

of Seminaries of Learning in the United States, ivith 
Suggestions for its Accomplishment. Mr. Johnson 
urged the establishment of State schools for teachers, 
in which they might receive such academical and pro- 
fessional instruction as would properly prepare them 
for their important work. The same year also Presi- 
dent Junkin, of Lafayette College, in a letter to the 
joint educational committee of the legislature, strongly 
urged the establishment in the existing colleges of 
Pennsylvania, of model schools and teachers' courses. 
The trustees of Lafayette, following the president's 
ideas, did found such a school, but being in advance 
of the time the effort soon failed.^ In the West also 
the waters were beginning to move. In 1825 Dr. 
Philip Lindsley, on assuming the presidency of Cum- 
berland College, soon after called the University of 
Nashville, Tennessee, delivered an address on the 
cause of education in that State, in which he strongly 
advocated the establishment of a State seminary for 
the education of teachers.^ 

ISTor were professional educators the only persons 
who were awakening to the need of educational re- 
form. Statesmen participated in the movement. De 
Witt Clinton, the enlightened governor of ISTew York, 
who missed no opportunity to promote popular edu- 
cation, in 1826 submitted to the State legislature 
views that are singularly descriptive of the situation 
in most of our States to-day. He ranked teaching 

1 J. P. Wickersham, History of Education in Pennsylvania, pp. 
608, 609, 612 ; Gordy, The Rise and Growth of the Normal School 
Idea, p. 16. 

2 Barnard, Normal Schools, pp. 9, 10 ; James Phelan, History of 
Tennessee, pp. 238, 239. 



68 HOKACE MANN 

among the learned professions, spoke of the insuffi- 
cient number of properly prepared teachers, and urged 
the establishment and maintenance by the State of a 
seminary for the education of teachers in the methods 
of the monitorial system and in the elementary 
branches of instruction. He argued that this recom- 
mendation, if carried out, would have a most benign 
influence on individual happiness and social prosper- 
it}^ He also recommended that provision be made 
for the gratuitous education, in the superior semi- 
naries of the State, of indigent, talented, and merito- 
rious youths. Unfortunately Governor Clinton's 
views proved to be in advance of public sentiment, 
and for the time no practical steps were taken to 
carry them out. The governors of many other States 
also urged the subject of education upon the State 
legislatures. 

With the opening of the present century foreign 
influence on American education became more pro- 
nounced, and also assumed a new character. Erench 
influence, which had been exclusive since close afiili- 
ations with France were established in the days of 
the Eevolutionary war, now waned to the vanishing 
point. In fact, it had never extended to elementary 
instruction. As French influence fell off, first Eng- 
lish influence and then German began to be felt. The 
great educational revival of the early part of this cen- 
tury touched with more or less power all the progres- 
sive countries of the world. 

Eirst to be mentioned is the effort to popularize 
instruction set in motion by Dr. Andrew Bell and 
Joseph Lancaster, which for a time promised to 



HORACE MANN'S FORERUNNERS 59 

overspread all civilized countries. These two dis- 
tinguished educationists differed on minor points, 
but they agreed on the one feature that gave the 
movement its most significant names, viz., mutual 
and monitorial instruction. By means of monitors 
they expected to cheapen and so to popularize ele- 
mentary teaching. Bell was a Churchman and Tory, 
Lancaster a Dissenter and Liberal; and these facts, 
together with strong differences of character and 
spirit, outside of Church and Tory circles tended to 
associate the name of Lancaster with the system 
much more closely than that of his rival. 

The system was not long in crossing the ocean. 
A representative of the Public School Society of New 
York City visited Lancaster's school in the Borough 
Eoad, London, in 1805, and his favorable report led 
to the opening of a school on the new plan in 'New 
York in 1809, the first of its kind in America. The 
idea spread, and for many years teaching by monitors 
was the vogue in large schools in the older parts 
of the country. Still it does not appear to have 
taken such deep root in New England as in the 
Middle States, no doubt because other methods of 
instruction were there more firmly rooted. In 1818 
the New York Society, preparatory to widening its 
work, brought over a teacher from London. Lan- 
caster himself soon followed, and at once began to 
lecture on his system in the Eastern cities. A promi- 
nent feature of the system was model schools and 
normal colleges for the preparation of teachers, and 
Lancaster served for some years as Principal of the 
Model School at Philadelphia. He was received with 



60 HORACE MANN 

the greatest enthusiasm. Statesmen vied with teach- 
ers in extolling him and his supposed invention. But 
Lancaster's career in America was as brief as it had 
previously been in England. The downfall of mutual 
instruction was as complete as its rise had been rapid 
and brilliant. At this distance it is not easy to ex- 
plain its brief popularity. In principle it involved 
nothing that was really new. Eor centuries edu- 
cators had resorted to monitors as a makeshift, and 
discerning men should have seen that more than a 
makeshift they could never be. The vogue of the system 
was due to the invincible faith of men in machinery, 
combined with the promise of cheapness in education. 
But in this instance men soon discovered, what men- 
tal science and educational experience both teach, 
that good education can neither be mechanized nor 
be made cheap. ^ Still, in America and in England 
alike, this short-lived system left behind it lasting 
results. In both countries it awakened great interest 
in the cause of popular education. In both it turned 
the attention of men to the necessity of properly pre- 
paring teachers for their work. But in America, 
most fortunately, it did not leave behind it the sys- 

1 Lancaster visited also South America and Canada — the first 
on the invitation of General Boliver. Returning to the United 
States, he strove in vain to resuscitate his system. It was practi- 
cally extinct before his own death, which occurred in New York in 
1828. On Lancaster in the United States, see the following writers : 
S. S. Randall, History of the Common School System of the State 
of New York, New York and Chicago, 1871 ; J. P. Wickersham, 
History of Education in Pennsylvania, Lancaster, Pennsylvania, 
1886; W. O. Bourne, History of the Public School Society of the 
City of JSTeiv York, New York, 1870; T. B. Stockwell, Pw6/ic ^dw- 
cation in Rhode Island, Providence, 1876. 



HOE ACE MANN'S FORERUNNERS 61 

tern of pnpil-teacliing, wliich. has been such a drag on 
educational progress in the Mother Country. 

But it is Germany that, in this century, has exerted 
upon our country the most protracted, the deepest, 
and the most salutary educational influence. The 
limits imposed by this chapter will permit but the 
merest glance at its origin and early progress; on a 
future page a single phase of the subject will receive 
fuller consideration. 

The introduction of Pestalozzian ideas and methods 
to the American people was the work of Mr. Maclure, 
a Scotchman, who had made his home in Philadel- 
phia. While carrying on his geological studies in 
Switzerland, he formed the acquaintance of Pestalozzi 
and Eellenberg, and became greatly interested in their 
schools. In June, 1806, a communication from his 
pen, explaining Pestalozzi's system, appeared in The 
National Intelligencer, Washington, District of Colum- 
bia. Later issues of the same journal contained still 
fuller expositions of the system, based on Cha- 
vannes' treatise, published in Paris in 1805. Mr. Ma- 
clure induced Mr. Joseph ]S"eef, who was especially 
recommended by Pestalozzi, to come to Philadelphia 
and open a school at the Falls of the Schuylkill. 
But, owing to his failure to adapt himself to the 
changed conditions, Mr. Neef's undertaking did not 
prove to be permanently successful. The two smail 
books that he brought out in 1808 and 1813 were 
probably the first Pestalozzian books published in 
the United States.^ Mr. Neef^s sympathy with the 

1 The title-page of the Trell-worn copy of the first of these books 
lying before me reads as follows : Sketch of a Plan and Method of 



62 HORACE MANN 

spirit of his master is well shown by his remark, that 
to teach a country school was his highest ambition. 

In 1818, 1819 Professor John Griscom, of New York 
City, made a careful study of the schools, colleges, 
and charitable institutions of G-reat Britain, France, 
Switzerland, Italy, and Holland, and on his return 
home embodied the fruits of his investigations in a 
work of two volumes, to which he gave the name, A 
Year in Europe^ "No one volume in the first half of 
the nineteenth century," says Dr. Barnard, "had so 
wide an influence on the development of our educa- 
tional, reformatory, and preventive measures, directly 
and indirectly, as this." Ex-President Jefferson pro- 
nounced the view that the book gave of the literary 
and public institutions of the countries that the au- 
thor visited the best that he had ever read. He said 
he found in it useful hints for the University of Vir- 
ginia, which he was then engaged in establishing. 

Education, founded on an Analysis of the Human Faculties and 
Natural Reason, suitable for the Offspring of a Free People and, 
for all Rational Beings. By Joseph Neef, formerly a coadjutor of 
Pestalozzi at his school near Berne, Swisserland. Philadelphia: 
Printed for the author, pp. 168. The title of the second work was 
Method of Teaching Children to read and lointe. The Popular 
Science Monthly, Vol. XLV. (1894), pp. 373-375, contains a brief but 
interesting sketch of Joseph Neef . His school at Schuylkill Falls 
was established in 1809. Here he is said to have had a,bout one 
hundred pupils, who were taught physiology, botany, geology, natu- 
ral history, languages, mathematics, and other branches, without 
the aid of a single text-book, a purely natural method being followed. 
In 1813 he taught a school at Village Green, Delaware County, 
Pennsylvania. In 1826 Mr. Neef assumed charge of the educational 
department of New Harmony, Indiana, — Kobert Owen's commu- 
nistic experiment. Afterwards he lived at Cincinnati and Steuben- 
ville, Ohio, and died at New Harmony in 1853. 

1 The second edition appeared in New York in 1824. 



HOKACE MANN'S FORERUNNERS 63 

Griscom also paid due lieed to the work of the great 
Swiss reformer.^ 

M. Guizot propounds the thesis that the ideas and 
institutions born in other countries than France that 
have benefited the common stock of European civiliza- 
tion, have all been obliged to pass through France as 
a condition of their general acceptance.^ If living, 
the distinguished doctrinaire would perhaps find con- 
firmation of his view in the fact that intellectual 
Germany was first laid open to the world by French 
writers. 

In 1813 John Murray, of London, published an 
English translation of Madame de Stael's Germany ; 
the first French edition had previously been destroyed 
by order of Napoleon. It would not be easy at this 
distance to measure the immediate influence of this 
book upon the American mind; suffice it to say, the 
disclosure that it made of the schools, and particu- 
larly of the universities, of Germany was the principal 
cause that sent George Ticknor to the University of 
Gottingen to study in 1815.^ How it was with his 
distinguished compeers, George Bancroft and Edward 

1 For a fuller history of the subject, see the following : N. A. 
Calkins, "The History of Object Teaching," Barnard's American 
Journal of Education, Vol. XII., p. 633; Henry Barnard, " Pesta- 
lozzianism in the United States," The American Jowmal of Edu- 
cation, Vol. XXX., p. 561; John H. Griscom, Memoirs of John 
Griscom, LL.D., etc., compiled from an Autobiography and Other 
Sources. New York, 1885, pp. 230-246. In 1832 George Ripley wrote 
an article in The Christian Examiner on Pestalozzi, laying stress 
on the moral elements of his system. Dr. Frothingham says Pesta- 
lozzi's experiment at Neuhof may have been an incentive to Brook 
Farm. — George Ripley, pp. 94, 95. 

2 History of Civilization, Lect. I. 

3 Life, Letters, and Journals of George Ticknor, Chaps. I., II. 



64 HORACE MANN 

Everett, we are not informed. But however that 
may have been, it was in the person of these distin- 
guished students and scholars that the direct contact 
between American education and the German univer- 
sities, which has proved to be so quickening and con- 
stant, was first established. The infiuence of Ticknor, 
Bancroft, and Everett, and the great army of Ameri- 
can students that followed them to the German uni- 
versities, no man who understands it would attempt 
to estimate. First, this influence touched the insti- 
tutions of higher learning, but in the end it reached 
the lower levels of instruction with equal power, 
especially when re-enforced by the writings of other 
Americans who went to Germany to study the subject 
of public education. 

It was in 1831 that M. Victor Cousin, by direction 
of the French Minister of Public Instruction and 
Ecclesiastical Affairs, visited Prussia and made his 
celebrated Eeport on the State of Public Instruction 
in that kingdom. This Eeport proved to be one of the 
most quickening educational documents ever written.^ 
Sir William Hamilton made it the subject of a notable 
contribution to Tlie Edinburgh Review in 1834, and 
Mrs. Sarah Austin, the translator of so many French 
and German books, made a translation of it that was 



1 Cousin had previously visited Saxony, Weimar, and the city of 
Frankfort on a similar errand. His several communications to the 
French minister together constituted the original French edition of 
his Report. Mrs. Austin confined her translation to the Report on 
Prussia, partly, she said, because she wished to make a small and 
cheap volume, and partly because this Report was confined to ele- 
mentary instruction. She wished to hold the attention of her 
countrymen exclusively to that subject. 



HORACE MANN'S rORERUNNERS 65 

published in London the following year. Moreover, 
Mrs. Austin's translation was published in New York 
in 1835, Mr. J. Orville Taylor, a distinguished edu- 
cationist of the day, furnishing an original preface 
devoted to observations on the existing state of edu- 
cation in the United States.^ 

In 1836 the trustees of Girard College for Orphans,, 
preparatory to organizing that institution, sent their 
newly elected President, Alexander D. Bache, to Eu- 
rope, to visit and report on the similar educational 
establishments of England, Scotland, Ireland, France, 
Belgium, Holland, Switzerland, Italy, Austria, and 
the States of Germany. Bache's elaborate Beport, 
which appeared in 1839, included a comprehensive 
view of primary and elementary schools in several of 
the countries that he visited, including Prussia, Sax- 
ony, and Bavaria, and exerted no little influence on 
educational development.^ 

A much more influential document, partly because it 
was small and inexpensive, was Professor C. B. Stowe's 
Report on Elementary Instruction in Europe, made 
to the Thirty-sixth General Assembly of the State of 
Ohio. Stowe received his commission from the Gov- 
ernor of the State, as he was on the point of embark- 

1 Report on the State of Pitblic Instruction in Prussia, addressed 
to the Count de Montalivet, Peer of France, Minister of Public In- 
struction and Ecclesiastical Affairs. By M. Victor Cousin, Peer of 
France, Comicillor of State, Professor of Philosopliy, Member of the 
Institute and of the Royal Council of Puhlic Instruction. With 
plans of schoolhouses. Translated by Sarah Austin. New York: 
Wiley and Long, 1835. 

2 Report on Education in Europe to the Trustees of the Girard 
College for Orphans. Philadelphia: Printed by Lydia B. Bailey, 
1839, 26 N. Fifth Street. 



66 HORACE MANN 

ing for Europe in March, 1836, but liis Eeport did 
not appear until 1839. It related to Great Britain, 
France, and other States, including those of Germany. 
Stowe drew attention, among other things, to the 
wonderful change which had taken place in the pol- 
icy of monarchical governments in respect to the edu- 
cation of the people — a fact that had been strongly 
impressed upon his mind during the progress of his 
visit. He spoke at length of the internal arrange- 
ment and instruction of the Prussian schools, gave a 
catalogue of Prussian school laws, and answered vari- 
ous questions relating to moral and religious training. 
This Eeport was frequently republished and widely 
circulated and read. Nor was this all; Mr. Stowe, 
who was then a professor in Lane Theological Semi- 
nary, Cincinnati, was for several years a frequent 
speaker on the educational platform, and generally on 
German aspects of the subject. 

Prom the beginning of the Kevival, teachers and 
other educators have sought strength and mutual im- 
provement in association and co-operation. It is said 
that a teacher's association was in existence in the 
city of ISTew York as early as 1798, holding its 
weekly meetings on Saturday evening at Federal 
Hall. But our indefatigable historian. Dr. Henry 
Barnard, found no such organization back of the Mid- 
dlesex County Association for the Improvement of 
Common Schools, formed at Middletown, Connecti- 
cut, in 1799.^ This, and all such similar organiza- 
tions as followed down to 1830, soon perished. 

1 Henry Barnard, The American Journal of Education, Vol. H., 
p. 19, " The American Institute of Instruction." 



HORACE MANN'S FORERUNNERS 67 

The American Institute of Instruction, our oldest 
existing society of the kind, was formally organized 
in a convention of teachers, and others interested, that 
was held in Boston in August, 1830. The Institute 
was a development of the growing interest in educa- 
tion and schools, and appears to have had some 
special relation to the lyceum movement which was 
then active in ISTew England. President Francis 
Wayland, of Brown University, delivered the intro- 
ductory discourse, and was chosen the first president. 
The object of the Institute, the constitution declared 
to be the diffusion of useful knowledge in regard to 
education. Men alone were admitted to membership; 
but the constitution graciously said, ladies engaged in 
the business of instruction should be invited to hear 
the annual address, lectures, and reports of commit- 
tees. It was first proposed to call the society The 
New England Association of Teachers ; but owing to 
the wide representation, and the desire of others than 
teachers to become members, the more catholic name 
was adopted. This action, however, did not prevent 
the Institute from becoming, in the long run, what 
was first proposed, a New England association. From 
1830 to 1897 the Institute has not failed to hold an 
annual meeting; the series of volumes of proceedings 
and papers that it has published, now nearly seventy 
in number, is by far the longest series of the kind 
known to our educational annals. 

The most important Western movement of the time 
is associated with the city of Cincinnati. Here was 
established, in 1829, the Academic Institute, under 
the auspices of which the first General Convention of 



68 HORACE MANN 

Teachers of the Western Country was held in June, 
1831. This convention soon grew into the Western 
Literary Institute and College of Professional Teach- 
ers, of which a somewhat full account will not be out 
of place. 

The preamble to the constitution declares that the 
members are "deeply impressed with the importance 
of organizing their profession in the valley of the 
Mississippi by a permanent association in order to 
promote the sacred interests of education, so far as 
they may be confided to their care, by collecting the 
distant members, advancing their mutual improve- 
ment, and elevating the profession to its just intel- 
lectual and moral influence on the community ; " while 
Article I. defines the object of the college to be, " to 
promote by every laudable means the diffusion of 
knowledge in regard to education, and especially by 
aiming at the elevation of the character of teachers 
who shall have adopted instruction as their regular 
profession." 

The College of Professional Teachers drew to itself 
a numerous and influential membership. The able 
historian of early culture in the Ohio Valley may be 
quoted: "The far-reaching influence of the body is 
indicated by the fact that delegates came to its meet- 
ings from the States of Pennsylvania, Ohio, Kentucky, 
Tennessee, Virginia, Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, Mich- 
igan, Mississippi, Louisiana, Georgia, North Carolina, 
South Carolina, Plorida, and the Territories of Iowa 
and Wisconsin. People crowded to its daily sessions, 
which were held in the largest churches, and listened 
to the essays and addresses with breathless attention 



HORACE MANN'S FORERUNNERS 69 

and semi-religions enthusiasm.^' The same writer 
says the College was the mother of the teachers' 
institute system in the West. The meetings of the 
College, which occurred in the month of October and 
continued a whole week, afforded ample opportunity 
for discussing education under all of its current as- 
pects. 

This College, so widely useful in its time, lived on 
till 1845, and then peacefully expired. Its dissolu- 
tion has never been satisfactorily explained. In a 
few years the territory that it had embraced was more 
or less covered by smaller and less ambitious associa- 
tions. The College had affiliated local organizations, 
and it promoted the holding of educational conven- 
tions in several of the Western States. Albert Pickett 
was the permanent president, and he is said to have 
originated the idea out of which the College grew.^ 

The educators of the Eevival were quick to lay hold 
of that great power of the new era — the Press. In 
1818 Albert Pickett and John W. Pickett, father and 

1 The proceedings of the convention of 1831 were published in 
The Academic Pioneer and Guardian of Education. In 1834 regu- 
lar Transactions began to appear, and were continued until six vol- 
umes had been published. In 1837, 1838 John W. Pickett brought out 
the single volume of The Western Academician and Journal of 
Education and Science, which contains the proceedings of the Col- 
lege of Teachers for the current year. The Picketts came from 
New York to Cincinnati, where they carried on a flourishing private 
school for girls. For secondary sources, see the following: W. H. 
Venable, Beginnings of Literary Culture in the Ohio Valley, pp. 
317, 420, 421, 425 ; W. T. Coggeshall, Barnard's American Journal 
of Education, Vol. VI., p. 85 ; E. D. Mansfield, Memoirs of the Life 
and Services of Daniel Drake, etc. Cincinnati, 1855, pp. 230-246 ; 
same, Personal Memoirs, Social, Political, and Literary, etc., 1803- 
1843. Cincinnati, 1849. 



70 HORACE MANN 

son, brought out in New York The Academician, the 
first American essay in educational journalism — some 
say the first in the English language. Only a single 
volume appeared. The Latin quotations with which 
the pages are liberally sprinkled savor of the pedan- 
try of the times ; but for a first venture, The Acade- 
mician was every way creditable to its conductors and 
to the country, and a worthy pioneer of the great 
army of educational journals that have followed 
it. One article is devoted to Fellenberg's school at 
Hofwyl; one to Pestalozzi's method of teaching chil- 
dren religion and morals; one to a comparison of 
Bell, Lancaster, and Pestalozzi; three are given to 
Lancaster, and, what is most significant, seven to 
Pestalozzi. The writer of the last-named series, who 
signs himself a native of Clinton County, says he has 
in his possession one work in French, one in Spanish, 
and more than thirty in German that deal with the 
subject. His articles, however, dwell far more upon 
the mechanics of the system than its genius. 

In 1826 there appeared at Boston, under the editor- 
ship of Mr. William Eussell, the first number of The 
American Journal of Education, the leading objects of 
which were to furnish a record of facts regarding the 
past and present state of education in the United 
States and foreign countries; to aid in diffusing en- 
larged and liberal ideas of education; to forward the 
education of the female sex, but chiefly to promote 
elementary education. At first The Journal appeared 
in monthly numbers of sixty-four pages each, but 
afterwards the size was enlarged, and the interval 
between the numbers lengthened. In all five volumes 



HOKACE MANN'S FORERUNNEKS 71 

appeared. The Journal was immediately succeeded 
by Tlie American Annals of Education and Instruction, 
edited by William C. Woodbridge, of which eight vol- 
umes were published, also at Boston. In his opening 
address the editor estimated that a thousand new schools 
with a thousand new teachers were required to keep 
things as they were, to say nothing of improvements. 
Mr. Woodbridge's preparation for his work embraced a 
collection of materials derived from personal observa- 
tion at foreign institutions, and personal interviews 
with some of the most distinguished foreign educators ; 
collections of the recent valuable books on education, 
and a series of foreign periodicals devoted to it, and 
the correspondence of many friends abroad. Both of 
these journals devoted much space to foreign educa- 
tors, particularly Pestalozzi and Fellenberg, and they 
are to-day valuable sources of contemporary educa- 
tional thought and intelligence. 

One group of forerunners that are not ordinarily 
put in the educational succession at all, remains to 
be mentioned. Illustrating the influence of science 
and invention upon opinion, Mr. Lecky says, "It is 
impossible to lay down a railway without creating an 
intellectual influence." The same may be said of 
education. Discoverers and inventors call into being 
new needs, create new ideals, furnish new teaching 
material, compel the invention of new methods and 
systems. Whitney with his cotton-gin, Cartwright 
and Arkwright with their weaving and spinning ma- 
chines. Watt with his steam-engine, Fulton with his 
steamboat, Stephenson with his locomotive, Morse 
with his telegraph, have exerted an educational influ- 



72 HORACE MANN 

ence that is incalculable. For one thing they have 
made the suburban population of to-day possible. In 
1790 the United States contained six cities of eight 
thousand inhabitants and upwards; in 1810 the num- 
ber had increased to eleven ; in 1830 it was twenty- 
six; ten years later, forty-four; and in 1890 it had 
become four hundred and forty -three. In 1790 the 
urban population was one in thirty of the total popula- 
tion ; in 1840 one in twelve ; in 1890 nearly one in three. 
Accordingly, down to the opening of the Revival, com- 
mon school education in the United States had been 
carried on under rural conditions, and the typical 
school was the rural school. Moreover, it was in 
Massachusetts that the new forces of civilization had 
declared themselves with greatest power; in 1840 her 
population was the most distinctly urban of any State 
in the Union, save perhaps Ehode Island. Horace 
Mann appeared on the scene just at this interesting 
juncture — ^when new material and social conditions 
made it possible to give elementary education a new 
shaping. He stands in history as the representative 
of the urban school.^ 

It must not be supposed that the educational revival 
with which we are dealing was a single or unrelated 
phenomenon in respect to time, country, or other 
social interests. History is continuous and cannot 
be cut up into arbitrary periods; still education as- 
sumed such prominence early in this century, in all 
the most progressive countries, that we may justly 

1 "Horace Mann," an address by Dr. W. T. Harris, in Proceed- 
ings and Addresses of the National Educational Association^ 1896, 
pp. 52-63. 



HORACE MANN'S FORERUNNERS 73 

speak of it as an educational era or epoch. Tlie 
United States, Germany, France, England, all shared 
in it. Besides, it was only one of many parallel 
movements that were going on at the same time, and 
that were all marked by a certain unity of nature and 
causation. 

It is common to characterize the present century 
from an intellectual point of view : it is marked by a 
prodigious growth of knowledge. Still there is reason 
to think that the new birth of feeling is even more 
remarkable than the new birth of intellect. Speaking 
of the time when this history opened, Mr. John Mor- 
ley has very justly said : 

"It was the day of ideals in every camp. The 
general restlessness was as intense among reflecting 
Conservatives as among reflecting Liberals ; and those 
who looked to the past agreed with those who looked 
to the future in energetic dissatisfaction with a sterile 
present. We need only look around to recognize the 
unity of the original impulse which animated men 
who dreaded or hated one another, and inspired books 
that were as far apart as a hum or is tic novel and a 
treatise on the Sacraments. A great wave of human- 
ity, of benevolence, of desire for improvement, — a 
great wave of social sentiment, in short, — poured 
itself among all who had the faculty of large and dis- 
interested thinking. The political spirit was abroad 
in its most comprehensive sense, the desire of strength- 
ening society by adapting it to better intellectual ideals 
and enriching it from new resources of moral power." ^ 

Mr. Morley illustrates his remarks by referring to 
1 The Life of Richard Cobden. Boston, 1881, p. 61. 



74 HORACE MANN 

the various divergent movements in society with 
which the names of Dr. Pusey, Dr. Newman, John 
Stuart Mill, Dr. Thomas Arnold, Eev. F. D. Maurice, 
Thomas Carlyle and Charles Dickens, John Bright 
and Richard Cobden, are associated. His illustra- 
tions are all drawn from English life; but in other 
countries the disquiet of the time was also marked, 
and was directed to a quarter equally unmistakable. 
In the United States it was the era of abolition- 
ism, non-resistance, transcendentalism, comeouterism, 
Brook Farm, Fourierite phalanxes, and last, but by 
no means least, of the revival of popular education. 
Mr. Emerson, speaking for Boston and the neighbor- 
hood, said: "We are all a little wild here with 
numberless projects of social reform; not a leading 
man but has a draft of a new community in his waist- 
coat pocket." It is distinctly to be observed that, 
much as these movements may have differed in the 
objects to which they were directed, they were all 
outcroppings of the general awakening of moral sen- 
timent. Dr. Frothingham is particular to remark that 
the Transcendental Club and the Massachusetts Board 
of Education originated at about the same time.^ The 
two organizations had no formal connection; for the 
most part, they were the work of different persons, 
but they both came out of the yeasty condition of the 
times. Before the middle of this century was reached, 
the enthusiasm of humanity was beginning to shake 
the world as never before. 

1 George Ripley. Boston, 1882, p. 55. 



CHAPTEE III 

HORACE MANN'S SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS 

The great educational work that Mr. Mann accom- 
plislied was so completely an outgrowtli of his per- 
sonal history and character, that it is necessary to 
give a fuller account of his education, and of the man 
himself when he entered upon that work, than would 
otherwise be required. 

Horace Mann was born in the town of Pranklin, 
Norfolk County, Massachusetts, May 4, 1796. He 
was the sixth in descent from William Mann, who 
came to Massachusetts Bay in the seventeenth cen- 
tury. Samuel Mann, son of William, graduated at 
Harvard College in 1665, and afterward preached and 
taught in the ancient towns of Dedham and Wren- 
tham. His descendants belonged to the plain people 
of the Commonwealth. This description applies to 
Thomas Mann, father of Horace, who cultivated a 
small farm as a means of livelihood. He was a man 
of feeble health, and died of consumption when his 
distinguished son was but thirteen years of age. He 
left in his family a strong impression of intellectual 
and moral worth, which, with the training that he 
gave them in the home and in the district school, 
was his principal legacy to his children. Horace's 
mother, whose maiden name was Stanley, was a 

75 



76 HORACE MANN 

woman of superior intellect, if not of education, in- 
tuitive rather than logical in her mental habit, pos- 
sessed of rare force of character, and thoroughly 
devoted to her children. If she did not contribute 
much to their didactic instruction, she did what was 
more valuable — start them on right lines of devel- 
opment. Horace continued to live with her on the 
farm until he was sixteen years of age. The town 
of Franklin stood second among the towns of the 
vicinity for intelligence, morality, and worth, and 
the Manns had a good standing in the town. 
Thomas Mann possessed more than ordinary talents, 
intelligence, and moral worth; he neither did or 
spoke evil, and if his children pitied and relieved 
the oppressed, and devoted themselves to love and 
good works, it was because they had profited by his 
instruction and example. One who was in a position 
to know^ maintained that the source of every good 
work which Horace Mann did, in its causes, could 
be traced back to the parental home — his devotion 
to education, his pleading for the slave, his temper- 
ance principles and practice, and his sympathy with 
the wretched and miserable. 

The Mann family regimen was marked by the stern- 
ness of the olden time, when the new spirit had not 
yet turned the heart of parents to the children, and 
the heart of children to the parents. Although the 
mother and son were devotedly attached to one an- 
other, there was still such a distance and reserve 
maintained between them that he never told her his 

1 An unpublished letter written by Miss Lydia B. Mann to Horace 
Mann. 



SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS 77 

physical sufferings until tliey revealed themselves to 
her, while his feelings he ke|)t studiously to himself. 
Such severe repression was the more trying to him 
because he was of a sensitive nature, demonstrative, 
and full of spirit, and, while maintaining the reserve 
that always marks the self-respecting soul, was yet 
disposed to seek close communion with congenial 
minds. But that old discipline could not have been 
as cold and heartless as it sometimes seems. In the 
present case this is fully proved by the manner in 
which Mr. Mann, in later life, spoke of his mother's 
deep influence upon him. For himself he could truly 
say that the strongest and most abiding incentives to 
excellence by which he was ever animated sprang 
from that look of solicitude and hope, that heavenly 
expression of maternal tenderness, when, without the 
utterance of a single word, his mother looked into his 
face and silently told him that his life was freighted 
with a twofold being, for it bore her destiny as well 
as his own. 

The straitened circumstances of the family, as 
well as the demands of the old discipline itself, com- 
mended the boy to the rugged nursing of Toil. She 
nursed him too much, he tells us. In the winter he 
was kept at indoor sedentary occupations that con- 
fined him too closely, while the summer labor of the 
farm was too severe for his strength, and often en- 
croached upon the hours of sleep. He could never 
remember when he began to work. Play-days he 
never had, and play-hours were earned by extra ef- 
forts. When he came to write, in a letter to a friend, 
the story of his early life, he found in his experience 



78 HORACE MANN 

one compensation; industry or diligence became his 
second nature, and he thought it would puzzle any 
psychologist to tell where it was joined on to the first 
one. Work became to him what water is to the fish. 
In adult life he wondered a thousand times to hear 
people say, "I don't like this business/' "I wish I 
could exchange it for that " ; for no matter what he 
had to do, he never demurred, but set about it like a 
fatalist, and it was as sure to be done as the sun 
was to rise. It was in this severe discipline that 
he formed the habits of industry and application 
which carried him through the great labors of later 
years. 

Mr. Mann's early education, so called, was such as 
Massachusetts gave her sons a century ago. His pict- 
ure of the school that he attended may well be re- 
produced in its essential features, because he drew it, 
because he was a part of it, and because it represents 
in some measure the state of things that he gave the 
best work of his life to reform. What was called 
love of knowledge was cramped into a love of books ; 
there was no oral instruction in the school. Books 
designed for children were few in number, and their 
contents were meagre and miserable; his teachers 
were good people, but bad teachers. The memory 
was the only mental faculty especially appealed to; 
the most comprehensive generalizations were given to 
the children instead of the facts upon which they 
were based; all ideas that did not come from the 
book were contraband, to be confiscated or thrown 
overboard by the teacher; with the infinite universe 
all around the children, ready to be daguerrotyped 



SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS 79 

upon their souls, they were never placed at the right 
focus to receive its glorious images. 

iSTo doubt this description is literally true, but it 
may prove to be very misleading. The child, know- 
ledge, and the teacher are the three estates of the 
educational realm; the child knows, knowledge is 
known, and the teacher brings the two into proper 
relations. But the three estates are not of equal or 
constant value. iSTothing could repress young Mann's 
love of knowledge. Her inward voice raised its plaint 
forever in his heart; and if his parents could not give 
him knowledge, they intensified his love of it, because 
they always spoke of learning and learned men with 
reverence and enthusiasm. He was taught to take care 
of the few books that the family had, as if they were 
sacred things. The habit followed him; he never 
dog-eared books, or profanely scribbled on their title- 
pages, margins, or fly-leaves; and would have stuck 
a pin through his flesh as soon as through the pages 
of a book. Books were no doubt the more sacred to 
him because, when a child, he earned his own school 
books by braiding straw. To the same purpose is the 
story that, when he was very young, a young lady 
who had studied Latin came to the house; he looked 
upon her as a sort of goddess, and years after the idea 
that he could ever study Latin broke upon his mind 
with the wonder and bewilderment of a revelation. 
Mann never mentions the studies that he pursued in 
school, but they were merely the limited course of the 
time. With all the rest, until he reached the age of 
sixteen, he had never been to school more than eight 
or ten weeks in a year. 



80 HORACE MANN 

One of Mr. Ma,iiii's bitterest complaints in after life 
was that, as a child, he had never enjoyed the free 
intercourse with is^ature that his ardent mind craved. 
Speaking of himself and the children with whom he 
mingled, he says that, although their faculties were 
growing and receptive, they were taught very little ; 
on the other hand, much obstruction was thrown be- 
tween them and Nature's teachings. Their eyes were 
never trained to distinguish forms and colors. Their 
ears were strangers to music. So far from being 
taught the art of drawing, he well remembered that, 
when the impulse to express in pictures what he 
could not express in words was so strong that it 
tingled down to his fingers, then his knuckles were 
rapped with the teacher's heavy ruler, or cut with 
his rod, so that an artificial tingling soon drove away 
the natural one. He thougkt an amateur poet, if not 
an artist, had been lost in him. While he had no 
doubt good cause for thinking as he did about these 
things, there is still reason to believe that he over- 
drew the picture. His parents and teachers plainly 
did nothiug to lead him in the way of Nature's les- 
sons and inspirations, but they could not sear his 
soul to the sweet if silent influences of Nature her- 
self. As to color and form, what better lessons could 
he have desired than those that were spread before 
him in the course of the revolving New England 
year? He learned things or realities in real life, and 
not under the artificial tuition of the schools. He 
bears testimony to the truth himself. Often when a 
boy he would stop, like Akensides' hind, to gaze at 
the glorious sunset, or lie down on his back at night 



SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS 81 

on the earth to look at the heavens. He profited 
largely both by the scientific spirit and by the poetic 
inspiration that Nature breathes. His later fondness 
for science-teaching and Nature studies in the schools 
— in both of which respects he was a generation in 
advance of his time — could not have proceeded from 
a mind whose intense love of natural truth and beauty 
had been left wholly unsatisfied. 

It was in admiration of the genius of their distin- 
guished countryman that the people of Franklin gave 
their town at its incorporation the name it bore. 
They proposed to Dr. Franklin that they would build 
a steeple to their meeting-house, if he would give 
them a bell to hang in it. He characteristically ad- 
vised them to spare themselves the expense of the 
steeple, and offered them a gift of books instead of a 
bell, since sense was preferable to sound. His proffer 
being accepted, he requested his friend, Dr. Richard 
Price, of London, to select a list of books to the value 
of £25, such as were most proper to inculcate the 
principles of sound religion and the best government. 
They should be such books as would ma.ke a suitable 
beginning of a little parochial library for the use of a 
society of intelligent, respectable farmers. Dr. Price 
complied with this request, and in due time the books 
reached their destination. This little library was one 
of Mann's schools. According to his report, it con- 
sisted mainly of old histories and theologies well 
suited, perhaps, to the conscript fathers, but ill suited 
to the postscript children. Still, he wasted his youth- 
ful ardor upon its martial pages and learned to glory 
in war — a lesson that he afterwards unlearned so 



82 HORACE MANN 

effectually that lie counted war almost a crime. This 
library, no doubt, was the germ of his later thought, 
that, had he the power, he would scatter libraries 
over the land as the farmer sows his wheat field with 
seed — a thought that was largely realized in the 
school libraries which we shall have occasion to con- 
sider hereafter.^ 

The last of Mr. Mann's youthful schools to be men- 
tioned is the parish church. Dr. Nathaniel Emmons, 
celebrated in New England annals, not only preached to 
the Franklin flock, but ruled it also for more than fifty 
years. The old New England family regimen and church 
regimen were cast in the same mould. Obedience, for- 
titude, rectitude, faith, and authority were cultivated 
rather than the gentler virtues. A stern logician, as 
well as a hyper-Calvinist, Dr. Emmons expounded the 
orthodox doctrines of sin and grace, dwelling more, 
says Mr. Mann, upon the sin than upon the grace. 
He reports that the veteran theologian expounded all 
the severe doctrines of the creed unflinchingly, while 
he rarely descanted upon the joys of heaven, and never 
upon the essential and necessary happiness of a virt- 
uous life. The fact is the Doctor did not believe 
any such thing, at least in Mr. Mann's sense of the 
language. Church-going was an ordinance in the 
Mann family, and by the time that he was ten years 
old Horace had learned the whole creed and the dia- 

1 Franklin's letter to Price and Price's reply are found in The 
Complete Works of Benjamin Fi^ayiTclin. By John Bigelow, Vol. 
IX., pp. 89, 90, 121, 122. The library dates from 1785. When the 
books reached their destination from London, Dr. Emmons, the 
pastor, preached a sermon commemorating the gift, which was 
afterwards published and dedicated to the giver. 



SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS 83 

lectics by whicli it was maintained. Being at once 
realistic and imaginative in his turn of mind, he was 
strongly impressed by the teachings that he heard 
from the pulpit and made very unhappy. He suf- 
fered often on going to bed at night; the objects of 
the day and the faces of friends gave place to visions 
of the awful throne, the inexorable judge, and the 
hax^less myriads among whom he often seemed to see 
those whom he loved best; and he wept and sobbed 
until Nature found that counterfeit repose in exhaus- 
tion whose genuine reality she should have found in 
freedom from care and the spontaneous happiness of 
childhood. When Horace was twelve years old a 
brother, to whom he was strongly attached, was 
drowned; and when at the funeral he listened to 
Dr. Emmons discoursing to the young people present 
on the danger of dying unconverted, and heard his 
mother groan, his soul rose up in rebellion^ and there 
immediately ensued a crisis in his life. In manhood 
he remembered the day, the hour, the place, the cir- 
cumstances, as though the event had occurred but a 
day before, when in an agony of desperation he 
broke the spell that had bound him and asserted his 
liberty. From that day he began to construct the 
theory of Christian ethics and doctrine respecting 
virtue and vice, rewards and penalties, time and eter- 
nity, God and His providence, which, with such modi- 
fications as advancing age and wider vision imparted, 
he retained to the close of his life. He came around 
again finally to a belief in the eternity of rewards and 
punishments as a fact necessarily resulting from the 
constitution of our nature, but he regarded the effects 



84 HORACE MANN 

of this belief upon conduct, character, and happiness 
as something very different from the belief which Dr. 
Emmons inculcated in his childhood. When at col- 
lege, under the influence of the classic authors, he 
accepted the d.eism of Cicero. Ultimately he em- 
braced Unitarianism as the best expression of his 
religious thought, feeling, and life. To him Chris- 
tianity was rather a system of exalted ethics than an 
evangelical message or gospel; he built more upon 
Nature than upon Eevelation ; he held that the power 
of natural religion had scarcely begun to be under- 
stood or appreciated, and looked forward to a time 
when its light would be to that of revealed religion 
as the rising sun is to the day star that precedes it. 
While he wholly threw off the theological system 
under which he was reared, he continued to regard it 
with increasing aversion to the end of life, and com- 
plained bitterly that it had done his own nature irrep- 
arable harm. Not long before his death, he said if 
it did not succeed in making him that horrible thing, 
a Calvinist, it did deprive him of that filial love for 
God, that tenderness, that sweetness, that intimacy, 
which a child should feel towards a Father who com- 
bines all excellence. He saw Him to be so logically, 
intellectually, demonstratively; but when he would 
embrace Him and breathe out unspeakable love and 
adoration, then the grim old spectre would thrust 
itself before him again. 

We are told that Horace Mann's childhood was an 
unhappy one; but the picture of his childhood, as 
drawn by himself, does not strike the reader who is 
familiar with the annals of New England as a new 



SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS 85 

or strange one. In its general features the picture is 
familiar enough. While sombre and, to a degree, 
depressing, the typical New England child-life was 
not without great compensations. It was rich in the 
rugged virtues that constitute the strength of character. 
The hard soil inured those that cultivated it to indus- 
try and frugality. The natural scenery and the preva- 
lent theology gave to life a serious character. The 
firm family discipline inculcated authority and obedi- 
ence, and fortified the will. The common schools put 
the tools of education into the pupil's hands, and 
showed him how to use them. The Latin schools, 
academies, and colleges opened the door that led to 
the higher learning. The civic life was a good politi- 
cal education. The preaching from the pulpit was a 
strong discipline of the logical faculties, and thor- 
oughly subordinated the moral nature of the hearer 
to the conceptions of God and the higher law. Mann's 
own statement, that at ten years of age he already 
knew the dialectics by which Dr. Emmons maintained 
the creed, as well as the creed itself, speaks elo- 
quently for the powerful intellectual stimulus that 
the old New England pastors brought to bear upon 
their congregations. The firm basis of conviction 
that they laid down, although conviction in ideas 
that we may deem repellent, was nevertheless almost 
always a ground-work for moral earnestness and often 
for burning moral enthusiasm. There was of course 
much repression of the feelings, and a woful poverty 
in the aesthetic elements of life. But when all is 
said, it would be a great undertaking to attempt to 
tell what New England owes, and the country owes. 



86 HORACE MANN 

to men who were trained in all essential respects 
like Horace Mann, and whose childhood was quite as 
unhappy as his own. 

In his twentieth year young Mann fell in with 
a fine college preparatory teacher, and, having first 
obtained the reluctant consent of his guardian, he 
began at once to study for college. In six months he 
fitted himself for admission to the Sophomore class 
of Brown University, which he entered in September, 
1816. It would, perhaps, be hard to say whether this 
achievement is the more striking testimony to the 
ability and zeal of master and pupil on the one hand, 
or to the low standard of the college on the other. 
There can, however, be no question that the ability 
and zeal of master and pupil were very great. The 
range of study during those six months embraced, 
besides Latin and Greek grammar, Corderius, ^sop's 
Fables, the ^neid, parts of the Georgics and Buco- 
lics, Cicero's Select Orations, the Four Gospels and 
part of the Epistles in Greek, and parts of the Oroeca 
Majora and Minora. Mann soon took the first place 
in his own class and in the college. A college friend 
testifies to the excellence of his preparation, and to 
his great ability as a student. He translated the 
Greek and Roman authors with great facility, accu- 
racy, and elegance; he excelled also in the mathe- 
matical and modern sciences, and showed unusual 
ability as a writer, debater, and orator. The Horace 
Mann tradition lived long in the college. On com- 
mencement day he took the highest honor, choosing 
as the subject of his oration, " The Gradual Advance- 
ment of the Human Species in Dignity and Happi- 



SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS 87 

ness." Anotlier college theme that has come down 
to us suggests still more decisively the trend of his 
mind: "The Duty of Every American to Posterity." 
The long and painful religious conflict that he had 
passed through only strengthened the moral bent of 
his nature, which had been pronounced from the 
beginning. Speaking once of his youthful longing 
for education, he said he knew not how it was, but 
the motive of his longing was never power, wealth, 
or fame; it was rather an instinct that impelled him 
towards knowledge, as the instinct of migratory birds 
impels them northward in springtime. All his boyish 
air-castles had reference to doing something for man- 
kind. The early precepts of benevolence inculcated 
by his parents flowed out in that direction, and he 
believed that knowledge was his needed instrument 
to accomplish his object. 

Strangely enough, none of Mr. Mann's biographers 
give any account of his private studies after he left 
college. His works, however, show a good range of 
reading in those branches of literature and general 
knowledge that lie proximate to the life of an edu- 
cated man who is actively engaged in professional and 
public business. 

On his graduation in 1819 Mr. Mann entered a law- 
yer's office at Wrentham, to fit himself for the profession 
of the law. He was soon called back to the Univer- 
sity, where he served as tutor in the Latin and Greek 
languages, and as librarian for two years. He won 
an excellent reputation as a teacher; he was marked 
by ability and thoroughness and the moral stimulus 
that he imparted to his pupils. He improved the 



88 HORACE MANN 

opportunity to review and extend his classical stud- 
ies. At the same time lie now came to the conclu- 
sion that the classics were far inferior to the modern 
sciences, both as information and as mental disci- 
plines. The heathen mythology was the product of 
human imagination; Nature was the handiwork of 
God. His valuation of scientific studies was far in 
advance of the time, and he longed to pursue them 
farther, but was restrained by the meagre facilities 
for such work that were accessible, as well as by the 
necessity of hastening his preparation for his chosen 
profession. 

On leaving Providence the second time, in 1821, 
Mr. Mann entered the celebrated law school conducted 
by Judge Gould, at Litchfield, Connecticut. Here he 
made a fine record for talents and attainments. One 
of his fellow-students at Litchfield says that he parted 
with Mann in the full conviction that he would become 
one of the great men of the time. His only drawback 
was lack of physical vigor, combined with a great de- 
velopment of the nervous system. This fellow-stu- 
dent also reports that Mann, at this period, was deeply 
interested in metaphysics. Brown being his favorite 
author. But in respect to this subject His mind was 
soon to take a new bend. 

In 1823 Mr. Mann was admitted to the bar, and 
entered at once upon the practice of the law. He 
continued in the practice of this profession until he 
entered upon his educational career in 1837, a period 
of fourteen years. At first he made his residence at 
Dedham, but in 1833 he removed to Boston. At the 
bar he was so successful that he is said to have won 



SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTEKS 89 

four out of every five contested cases in which, he was 
engaged as counsel. This extraordinary success was 
due to two causes — the ability with which he pre- 
pared his cases and tried them^ and the scrupulous 
care with which he undertook them. He made it an 
inflexible rule of his professional life never to under- 
take a cause that he did not believe to be right. 

About the time that he established himself at Ded- 
ham, Mr. Mann began to take an active interest in pub- 
lic affairs. In 1824 he delivered a Fourth of July 
oration that attracted the attention of John Quincy 
AdamS; who predicted a distinguished career for its 
author. In 1826 he delivered, also at Dedham, a 
eulogy on Adams and Jefferson that the same high 
authority characterized as "of splendid composition 
and lofty eloquence." A man who acts upon Mann's 
rule in respect to accepting cases at law as a counsel 
is not likely to take up public causes inconsiderately, 
but is likely to command a great measure of the public 
confidence. He was elected to the State House of 
Eepresentatives in 1827, and was re-elected each year 
until he was transferred to the Senate in 1833. Here 
he served four years, the last two as President of the 
body. He was a laborious and influential member of 
the legislature. His first speech was in defence of 
religious liberty, which he thought was endangered 
by some measure that was pending. He also made 
one of the first speeches on railroads ever printed in 
the country. He took, however, slight interest in 
partisan politics, but a deep interest in the larger 
public questions, — ■ charities, benevolent institutions, 
education, temperance, civil, political, and religious 



90 HORACE MANN 

liberty^ and good morals. He was deeply interested 
in the welfare of the insane, and it was owing to his 
efforts that the Worcester Hospital for the insane, 
one of the early institutions of the kind in the 
country, was founded in the face of much indifference 
and some opposition and obloquy. He afterwards 
served as Chairman of the Board of Trustees, and 
took a most active interest in the administration of the 
institution. He was also influential in securing the 
new legislation concerning education that he was soon 
after called upon to administer. While in the legis- 
lature Mr. Mann assisted in carrying through a measure 
for revising the State laws, and he was afterward a 
member of the commission that made the revision. 

Men are known by the company they keep, says 
the adage. While Mr. Mann highly prized inter- 
course with cultivated minds, he was not greatly 
attracted to men who had no deep interest in amel- 
iorating the evils of society. He was ethical in 
everything. His heart went only where his head 
recognized benevolence. When Dr. Channing, Father 
Taylor of the Sailors' Bethel, George Combe, Dr. 
Samuel G. Howe, and Charles Sumner are named as 
among the foremost of his friends, more has been 
done to characterize him than a chapter of descrip- 
tion or analysis could accomplish. 

While at Brown University Mr. Mann became 
acquainted with the daughter of Dr. Messer, the 
president. She was then a child. All his ideas of 
excellence and all his hopes of future happiness be- 
came identified with her image, and after carrying 
her in his heart ten years he married her. He post- 



SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS 91 

poned his marriage until tie had paid his college 
debts, acquired a small competence, and won a recog- 
nized position in his profession and in public life. 
The two years of happy married life that he passed 
with her were to him the first perfect proof of the 
goodness and benignity of God, and its sudden termi- 
nation, for a time, seemed to furnish proof of just the 
opposite. Mr. Mann was given to the use of impas- 
sioned language, but perhaps he was never more 
impassioned than in speaking afterwards of this happy 
period, when for him there was a light upon the 
earth brighter than the light of the sun, and a voice 
sweeter than the harmonies of Nature. He thought 
that the happiness, which was boundless in present 
enjoyment, would be perpetual in duration. His life 
went out of itself. One after another the feelings 
that had been before fastened upon other objects loos- 
ened their strong grasp and went to dwell and rejoice 
in the sanctuary of her holy and beautiful nature. 
Ambition forgot the applause of the world for the 
more precious gratulation of that approving voice. 
Joy ceased its quests abroad, for at home there was 
an exhaustless fountain to slake its renewing thirst. 
There imagination built her palaces and garnered her 
choicest treasures. His wife ennobled his life, sup- 
plying new strength for toil and new^ motives for 
excellence. The sudden close of such a life as this 
plunged him into the deepest grief, and brought 
back again the thick clouds of the old spiritual con- 
flict, which for a time threatened to darken the re- 
mainder of his days. She died suddenly while he 
was watching at night alone by her bedside, no per- 



92 HORACE MANN 

son within call. The terrors of that dreadful night 
spent alone with the dead, where he was found nearly 
insensible in the morning, revisited him with fearful 
power for many years at each recurring anniversary, 
and were never wholly dispelled. 

It was the sad event just narrated that led to the 
removal from Dedham to Boston. Priends who loved 
Horace Mann, and feared that he would be practically 
lost to the world if left to himself, intervened to effect 
this removal, hoping thus to break up in part old associ- 
ations, to surround him with new scenes and objects 
of interest, and to re-energize him for continued use- 
fulness. The new experiment was only partially suc- 
cessful. Misfortune continued to follow him. In 
lending assistance to a brother, he had become finan- 
cially involved to such a degree that the brother's 
failure not only swept away the hard-earned accumu- 
lations of his professional life, but even compelled him 
to undergo positive privation. In boyhood, he re- 
lates, the habit of depending upon himself for the 
gratification of all his wants became so fixed that, to 
the end of his life, a pecuniary favor was a painful 
burden to be eased only by a full requital. This old 
habit, as well as his moral sense, would not permit 
the withholding of anything that was necessary to 
satisfy the obligations that he had assumed. With 
all the rest, the death of dear friends, as of his 
mother and Dr. Messer, followed and deepened his 
grief. But by degrees, owing largely to the minis- 
trations of kind friends, he was won back to useful- 
ness and happiness. When he returned to the world, 
we read in The Life, it was rather as a spectator than 



SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS 93 

a participator in its ordinary pleasures ; but, baptized 
in the divine flame which sorrow lights in the soul, 
he was ready to do all he could to supply its needs, 
and it seemed to others that the period had passed 
when an unworthy thought or motive could influence 
him. In these severe trials, his habit of indefati- 
gable labor rendered him excellent service. These 
periods of sorrow in Mr. Mann's early life awaken 
in the minds of the reflecting the question, w^hether it 
was morally necessary that he should thus suffer in 
order to become fitted to perform the great work 
that lay before him. 

Perhaps what has been said, left to stand alone, 
would create a false impression. Mr. Mann was by 
no means simply a sombre moralist. A friend who 
knew him and his wife at Dedham says he was brill- 
iant in conversation, with sparkling repartee, gush- 
ing wit, and a merry laugh, given to droll sayings, 
but free from nonsense. He was original, refreshing, 
and exciting, because he treated even trifling subjects 
in a manner peculiar to himself. He had great power 
to draw out other minds; even the timid would rise 
from conversation with him, wondering at the talent, 
thought, and feeling that he had opened up in them. 
He had exquisite tenderness and care for the feelings 
of others, and a delicate appreciation of woman's 
nature, and a high estimation of her capabilities, 
although shrinking from the assumption on her part 
of any place in the social world for which she was 
unfitted. He had a keen love for the beautiful, and 
was quick to recognize the qualities that give eleva- 
tion to character. He was a radiant man, then, at 



94 HORACE MANN 

Dedliam; perhaps more so in the sprightliness and 
genuine mirthfulness of his nature than after the 
blight of sorrow fell so heavily upon him. 

The senior Mann had died of consumption when 
his son was thirteen years old. Horace inherited 
weak lungs, and it has been said of him that be- 
tween his twentieth and thirtieth years he just skirted 
the fatal shores of that disease on which his father 
had been wrecked. His forced efforts to prepare for 
college, and his unremitting application after his 
admission, broke down his health completely at the 
close of his Sophomore year. He was for some time 
completely prostrated, and he never recovered even 
his own wonted health. The writer just referred to 
says that from this time on his strength was only 
the salvage from a wreck. He said himself, in his 
last years, that he had lost his health before he knew 
how to care for it. To the end of life he continued 
capable of working with great intensity and effective- 
ness for protracted periods of time; but when the 
work was done and the tension relaxed, he paid a 
fearful compensation in the sufferings that he under- 
went. His high nervous temperament, sensitive or- 
ganization, and keen sensibility both gave him power 
and made him suffer. 

Only one of Mr. Mann's schools remains to be 
noticed. Just as he was about to take the public 
schools of Massachusetts for his province, he was 
converted to phrenology by reading George Combe's 
Constitution of Man. A few years later Mr. Combe 
visited the United States, remaining in the country 
two years, which time he devoted to travel, to study. 



SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS 95 

to writing, and particularly to lecturing on his favorite 
subjects. Mr. Mann became liis interested auditor, 
firm disciple, and devoted friend. The correspond- 
ence between the two men that began in America 
continued, with some slackening towards the end, 
until closed by the Scotch philosopher's death. All 
things considered, the most interesting series of let- 
ters that Mrs. Mann has inserted in The Life are her 
husband's letters to Combe. Combe wrote of Mann: 
"He is a delightful companion and friend, and among 
all the excellent men whom we met in Boston, none 
entwined themselves more deeply and closely with 
our affections than Horace Mann." Late in life Mr. 
Mann wrote to Combe: "There is no man of whom 
I think so often; there is no man of whom I write so 
often; there is no man who has done me so much 
good as you have. I see many of the most valuable 
truths as I never should have seen them but for 
you, and all truths better than I should otherwise 
have done." Personal qualities aside, what inter- 
ested Mann most in Combe was the philosophy of 
human nature and human development that he found 
in his writings, lectures, and conversation; and what 
interested Combe most in Mann was the practical 
experiment that Mann was making to carry out some 
of his own favorite educational ideas. Mann avowed 
the opinion that George Combe would work a revolu- 
tion in mental science equal to that which Lord Bacon 
had worked in natural science. Still he did not follow 
his master to all lengths. Essentially prosaic and 
destitute of imagination, although gifted with great 
logical powers, Combe could believe in nothing that 



96 HORACE MANN 

he did not see and understand; while Mann, on the 
other hand, with his mental endowment, was able to 
transcend the empirical sphere and believe firmly in 
a future life of endless progress. The two men 
always found an inseparable bond in their common 
belief in the improvability of the race. 

The acknowledged ability of the early phrenolo- 
gists, the high character of many of their adherents, 
and the undeniable fact that they had laid hold of 
some important truths have not prevented the so- 
called science from falling into universal contempt. 
In the minds of students it means unscientific method 
and false results; in the common mind it is associ- 
ated with the quackery of the showman ; while it has 
no place whatever in the history of thought as con- 
ceived and written by orthodox writers on the history 
of philosophy. In fact, phrenology long ago fell into 
such complete discredit that the man who mentions 
it to-day expects to see on the faces of his auditors 
either a smile or a blank stare. It is now difiicult 
even to create in imagination the state of mind that 
led many able men, both in Europe and America, to 
look confidently to phrenology as the harbinger of 
great mental and moral ameliorations — to find in 
the Constitution of Man a manual of universal train- 
ing and cultivation; in a word, a sort of Bible. To 
recreate that state of mind is far from the present 
purpose. Still Mr. Mann's enthusiastic adhesion to 
the gwasi-science, and its extraordinary influence upon 
his mind and work, compel a brief view of the subject. 

As a science phrenology was built on two funda- 
mental ideas. One is the idea that the faculties of 



SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTEES 97 

the Imman mind can be localized in the human brain. 
The other is the idea that the localization of these 
faculties can be effected by observing the protuber- 
ances of the human skull. The phrenologists differed 
in many points, but in these two they all agreed. 
The first idea is now fully accepted by all accredited 
authorities; the second is just as thoroughly rejected. 
But this was not the only fatal mistake that Gall 
and his followers committed. They formed wrong 
ideas of what mental faculties are, conceiving them 
as things or forces, rather than as modes or forms in 
which the one energy that we call the mind asserts 
or manifests itself. Another fatal mistake was the 
defective observation and analysis- that led to the 
elaborate but crude and even fantastical scheme or 
chart of "faculties" that they made out. And, 
thirdly, they were largely discredited by their false 
localizations. The portions of the brain lying under 
the labels that the phrenologists X-)asted on the human 
skull do not, in general, correspond with the func- 
tions that the labels name. Surely, such blunders as 
these are sufficient to discredit any scheme of phil- 
osophy, and especially a new one. 

But the breakdown of phrenology as a science 
should not blind us to the fact that its cultivators 
started with a sound postulate, and that their general 
method was right. Their postulate was the doctrine 
of localization; their method, observation and experi- 
ment. They were the experimental psychologists of 
their time. If they had cultivated interior as well 
as external observation, they might have been saved 
from some of their great blunders; but they broke 



98 HORACE MANN 

wholly with the introspective tradition, and, it can 
hardly be doubted, gave the objective method of men- 
tal study a considerable impulse. They did stimulate 
a certain kind of mental observation and create much 
independent study of human nature. What is more, 
if little can be told about a man by feeling of his 
"bumps," something can be told by studying the size 
and form of his head, his face, manner, and tempera- 
ment — to which last the phrenologists attached great 
importance. 

The phrenologists built upon the basis of their 
science an extensive system of education. Combe, 
in fact, regarded his best known book only as an 
introduction to an educational treatise. This system 
embraced the whole human being — his physical, 
mental, and moral nature. Some of the favorite 
ideas of the phrenologists were these: The body 
must receive careful attention as well as the soul; 
physical health is essential to efficiency, usefulness, 
happiness; food and clothing are moral factors as 
well as books, studies, schools, and sermons; man 
must be considered in his environment, and not 
merely in himself. In fact, the full title of Combe's 
best known book is The Constitution of Man Con- 
sidered in Relation to External Objects. The funda- 
mental postulate in this educational system was that 
man is governed by definite laws, and that wisdom 
consists in observing them. "The laws God has 
impressed on man," says Combe, "are the keys to 
the right understanding of His rule." No doubt 
" observing the laws " often became mere cant in the 
mouths of phrenologists; but the conception of law 



SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS 99 

as dominating the human world, at the opening of 
this century, greatly needed to be preached. Another 
most important principle was that the faculties, and 
so the whole mind, can be developed through appro- 
priate exercise or activity. The tendency was strong 
to individualize the constituent elements of character 
as they were understood, and so to effect the appli- 
cation of stimulus or its withdrawal as might be 
thought necessary. If the doctrine of environment 
tended to make man the creature of circumstances, 
the doctrine of growth through activity tended to put 
his mind and character, so to speak, in his own 
hands, and thus to give education a powerful im- 
pulse. Possibly the phrenologists conceived the law 
of activity more mechanically than Frobel and Her- 
bart, but they certainly put upon it an equal stress.^ 

But the phrenologists did much more than to en- 
courage education. Holding law to be universal, 
as they did, they strove to free teaching from its 
empiricism and to render it scientific. They said 
education should be practical. They emphasized the 
sciences among studies, and particularly physiology 
and the sciences of the mind. They entered most 
enthusiastically into practical educational work, both 
in England and in America. The fact seems to be 
little known, but it is a fact that George Combe 

1 We have the authority of Charles Gibbon, The Life of George 
Cornhe, London, 1878, Vol. II., p. 9, for the statement that Combe 
was offered the Chair of Mental and Moral Philosophy in the 
University of Michigan. Some of the prominent adherents of 
phrenology in the United States, beside Mann, were Dr. S. G. 
Howe, George B. Emerson, and Cyrus Pierce, all distinguished 
educators. 



lOa HORACE MANN 

was almost as active in the cause of popular edu- 
cation in England as Horace Mann was in the United 
States.^ 

The reader must not suppose that these paragraphs 
are an attempt to rehabilitate the phrenologists. The 
aim is merely to discover and, if possible, to explain 
why they attracted Mr. Mann, and whether, and in 
what way, they influenced educational progress. And 
there can be little question that in a day when mental 
science was to a great degree abstract and barren; 
when the doctrine of individualism and the current 
theory of the government of the world excluded the 
conception of universal law from the minds of most 
men; when opinion was chaotic, and practice empiri- 
cal, and when education was deeply marked by the 
characteristics of the time — the phrenologists did 
set before men certain definite educational ends, and 
did point them to a method that they promised would 
lead to those ends. In other words, phrenology gave 
her devotees, as they thought, an insight into human 
nature, a vision of human perfectibility, and a prac- 
tical work to be accomplished. Undoubtedly, in its 
day, phrenology energized for the work of life some 
very influential men who would never have been ener- 
gized, or at least not fully so, by the old metaphysics 

1 George Combe was one of the most tireless writers on education 
of his time. He produced no great work that is distinctly educa- 
tional, but dealt with many phases of the subject in numerous pub- 
lications. Mr. William Jolly, H.M. Inspector of Schools, collected 
and edited his educational writings, in a work that bears the follow- 
ing title : Education, Its Principles and Pixictice, as Developed by 
George Comhe, Author of the ^^Constitution of Man." London: 
Macmillan & Co., 1879, 8vo., pp. 772. 



SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS 101 

or the old theology.^ In a sense, the impression that 
phrenology made on men's minds may be likened to 
that created on its first appearance by the Sensational 
philosophy. But there was a great difference. 

Whatever may be the value of the foregoing specu- 
lations, Mr. Mann accepted at the hands of Gall and 
his disciples his whole philosophy of human nature. 
He built all his theories of intellectual and moral 
improvement upon the ideas with which they fur- 
nished him. Their teachings strongly reinforced his 
belief in the improvability of men, thus making him 
still more optimistic. His aim, as a practical re- 
former, became more definite and certain under their 



1 After remarking that no teacher of the day was so inspiring 
to Richard Cobden as George Combe, Mr. Morley declares that few 
emphatically second-rate men have done better work. "That 
memorable book \_The Constitution of Man'\" he says, "whose 
principles have now, in some shape or other, become the accepted 
commonplaces of all rational persons, was a startling revelation 
when it was first published in 1828, showing men that their bodily 
systems are related to the rest of the universe, and are subject to 
general and inexorable conditions ; that health of mind and char- 
acter are connected with states of body ; that the old ignorant or 
ascetical disregard of the body is hostile both to happiness and 
mental power, and that health is a true department of morality. 
We cannot wonder that zealous men were found to bequeath fort- 
unes for the dissemination of that wholesome gospel ; that it was 
circulated by scores of thousands of copies, and that it was seen on 
shelves where there was nothing else save the Bible and Pilgrim's 
Progress." " To show, as Combe showed," Mr. Morley continues, 
"that the character and motives of men are connected with phys- 
ical predispositions, was to bring character and motive within the 
sphere of action, because we may, in that case, modify them by 
attending to the requirements of the bodily organization. A bound- 
less field is thus opened for the influence of social institutions, 
and the opportunities of beneficence are without limit," — Life of 
Richard Cobden. Boston, 1881, pp. 64, 65. 



102 HOEACE MANN 

influence. He sometimes wrote his letters in their 
jargon. He even believed that it was his " causality " 
which saved him from utter wreck in the two great 
crises of his life, viz., those growing out of his early 
theological training and of his great bereavement. 
Phrenology doubtless led him, as in the Sixth Report, 
to overvalue the study of physiology and to commit 
other blunders. Still it is difficult for one who looks 
over the whole ground to resist the conviction that 
the measure of truth found in the pseudo-scienGe did 
much more to fit him for his great educational work 
than his earlier readings of Brown and the other 
metaphysicians. 

This sketch of Horace Mann's life, from his birth 
to the age of forty-one, and of his mental and moral 
character, completes the general introduction to the 
present work. The sketch serves the additional 
purpose of showing that he was admirably equipped 
for this work, so far as equipment could be deter- 
mined without actual trial and testing. Apart from 
his natural abilities he had been reared on a Massa- 
chusetts farm, and was thus familiar with the brief 
and simple annals of the poor. He had achieved, by 
dint of great exertion, a good college education, and 
had some practice in the teaching art. He had gained 
the knowledge and the discipline that the study and 
the practice of the law confers upon the student and 
practitioner. He had had ten years of active experi- 
ence in public life, and was in sympathy with all the 
better public movements of the time. He was the 
master of a copious eloquence, with both tongue and 
pen, which sometimes tended to the verbose and 



SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS 103 

heavy, but again was nervous and shot through with 
vivid imagination and impassioned feeling. His cast 
of character was distinctly ethical. The master forces 
of his life may be thus presented: Faith in God as 
infinitely wise, true, and good; Faith in men as in- 
definitely improvable, both in the life that now is 
and in the life that is to come; Faith in knowledge 
and teaching as conducing directly and powerfully to 
man's improvability ; Faith in his own duty to glorify 
God by ministering to the improvability of men. 
Language could hardly exaggerate the intensity of 
his belief in every one of these articles of faith. 
Save in a single particular, this creed, if creed it 
may be called, will not be made the subject of criti- 
cism in this place. It would not be difficult to show 
that Mr. Mann, like all men of his habit of mind, 
overestimated the efiicacy of knowledge and teaching, 
and so of schools and education, as leading to the 
amelioration of man's estate.^ He no doubt failed to 
appreciate how much still remains to be done when a 
man has been taught the way of life more perfectly: 

1 Rev. E. E. Hale has some interesting remarks concerning cer- 
tain ideas that were afloat in his boyhood. " It will be hard," he 
says, "to make boys and girls of the present day understand how 
much was then expected from reforms in education." He mentions 
Dr. Channing, the Swiss Reformers, the Round Hill School, Lord 
Brougham and his " march of intellect," the Society for the Promo- 
tion of Useful Knowledge, etc. " In America," he says, " the reign 
of lyceums and mechanics' institutes had begun. Briefly, there 
was the real impression that the Kingdom of Heaven was to be 
brought in by teaching people what were the relations of acids to 
alkalies, and what was the derivation of the word 'cordwainer.' 
If we only knew enough, it was thought we should be wise enough 
to keep out of the fire and should not be burned." — A New Eng- 
land Boyhood, pp. 25, 26. 



104 HORACE MANN | 

lie must be induced or moved to walk in that way. Mr. 
Mann did not justly measure those elements of charac- 
ter and life that transcend the understanding. He did 
not make sufficient allowance for the power of he- 
redity, conservative habit, inertia, custom, or for the i 
play of feeling and will. He therefore expected re- j 
suits to flow from rational causes that human expe- 
rience has never justified. Still, we need not regret | 
his mistake. The prophets and apostles of great | 
causes are men of faith and enthusiasm, and if i 
they did not magnify their work they could never | 
accomplish it. 



CHAPTER IV 

SECRETARY OF THE MASSACHUSETTS BOARD OF 
EDUCATION 

Near the close of his legislative term, Mr. Mann 
signed, as President of the Senate, a bill upon which 
his whole after life, and so this history, turns. It 
bore the date April 20, 1837, carried the title "An 
Act Relating to Common Schools," and contained the 
following provisions : 

(1) His Excellency the Governor, with the advice 
and consent of the council, should appoint eight 
persons, who, together with the governor and lieu- 
tenant-governor ex offidis, should constitute and be 
denominated the Board of Education; the persons so 
appointed should hold their offices for the term of 
eight years, provided that the first person named 
should go out of office at the end of one year, the 
person next named at the end of two years, etc., till 
the whole Board be changed; and the governor, with 
the advice and consent of the council as before, 
should fill all vacancies, which occurred from death, 
resignation, or otherwise. (2) The Board of Educa- 
tion should prepare and lay before the legislature, in 
a printed form, on or before the second Wednesday 
of January, annually, an abstract of the school re- 
turns received by the Secretary of the Common- 

105 



106 HORACE MANN 

wealth; it might appoint its own secretary, who 
should receive a reasonable compensation for his ser- 
vices, and who should, under the direction of the 
Board, collect information of the actual condition and 
efficiency of the common schools, and other means of 
popular education, and diffuse as widely as possible 
throughout every part of the Commonwealth, infor- 
mation of the most approved and successful methods 
of arranging the studies and conducting the education 
of the young, to the end that all children who de- 
pended upon the common schools for instruction, might 
have the best education which those schools could be 
made to impart. (3) The Board of Education, annu- 
ally, should make a detailed report to the legislature 
of all its doings, with such observations as its experi- 
ence and reflection might suggest, on the condition 
and efficiency of the system of popular education, and 
the most practicable means of improving and extend- 
ing it. 

At the session of the legislature for 1836-1837 the 
Directors of the American Institute of Instruction had 
memorialized that body to consider the expediency of 
appointing, for a term of years, a Superintendent of 
the Common Schools of the Commonwealth, urging 
the usual arguments in favor of the measure. Be- 
sides, Governor Everett, in his opening address, 
recommended the creation of a State Board of Educa- 
tion. The whole subject was accordingly referred to 
the joint committee of the two houses on education. 
The committee reported the text of the act summar- 
ized above, which was drawn by Mr. James G. Carter 
of the House of Kepresentatives. At first, the meas- 



SECRETARY OF MASSACHUSETTS BOARD 107 

ure was lost in the House by a vote of nearly two to 
one, but, owing to Mr. Carter^ s wise management and 
advocacy, was finally carried. It was the culmination 
of the agitation that he had first aided thirteen years 
before, and that he had continued to promote to the 
utmost until the end finally crowned the work. 

The step that the legislature took was in no sense 
a revolutionary one. The law imposed some duties 
upon the Board that it had created, but conferred 
upon it no real powers. The Board was nothing 
more than an organ of information. The duties im- 
posed upon it would mean much or mean little accord- 
ing as the law should be interpreted by positive action. 
The duties of the Board, if performed in a feeble and 
perfunctory way, would be useless, or worse than use- 
less ; but if they were performed with intelligence and 
vigor, they might become great instruments of power 
— how great we shall soon have occasion to see. 
Manifestly everything would depend first upon the 
character of the Board that the governor should ap- 
point, but ultimately upon the character of the Secre- 
tary that the Board should select. In no sense could 
the law be self -executing. 

The wisdom of creating a board at all for such a 
purpose may be questioned. Why not provide at 
once for the executive officer who must give the law 
its efiiciency, and dispense with the board altogether? 
Why not adopt the recommendation of the Directors 
of the American Institute of Instruction rather than 
that of Governor Everett? Many of the States that 
followed Massachusetts in educational effort have not 
created such boards, and few of the States that have 



108 HORACE MANN 

done so have intrusted tliem with the appointment of 
the State educational executive. The general ques- 
tion need not be canvassed in this place ; it suffices to 
remark that the Massachusetts Board of Education at 
least was not a piece of mistaken judgment. It is 
not at all probable that a State education department, 
under the direction of one man, could have been cre- 
ated in 1837, or for years thereafter, if indeed at all. 
That would have savored of centralization. At the 
time it was, no doubt, a plural department or nothing. 
But this is not all; the Board, made up as it was, 
gave to the department a respectability and dignity, 
and so a place in the public confidence, that no single 
executive could have commanded. It has always 
stood for safety, at least, if not for brilliant initia- 
tive. Still further, it has no doubt provided, all 
things considered, a better State educational adminis- 
tration than the people would have directly provided 
for themselves, voting at the popular election. The 
Board has also proved a very competent authority 
to manage, with the help of its Secretary, the State 
Normal schools. 

The first Board was made up with peculiar care. 
It was necessary to avoid arousing opposition as far as 
possible. Years afterward, in the midst of the great 
religious controversy that we shall have occasion to 
sketch on future pages, Mr. Mann explained the 
criteria that were followed in selecting the members. 
All the great parties into which the State was divided 
were regarded. First of all religious views were con- 
sidered, then political considerations. Preferences 
for men that the public had expressed by elevating 



SECRETARY OF MASSACHUSETTS BOARD 109 

them to official positions, were thought important. 
And the element of locality, although considered 
among the weakest motives, was not wholly disre- 
garded. Besides the ex offioiis members, the list, 
when it appeared, carried the names of these dis- 
tinguished citizens : James G. Carter, Emerson Davis, 
Edmund Dwight, Horace Mann, Edward A. Newton, 
Robert Eantoul, Jr., Thomas Eobbins, and Jared 
Sparks. Carter and Eantoul, one a Whig and the 
other a Democrat, were taken from the House of 
Eepresentatives ; Mann, a Whig, came from the Sen- 
ate. Dwight was a Unitarian, Newton an Episco- 
palian, both business men, while Davis and Eobbins 
were orthodox clergymen. Sparks had formerly been 
a Unitarian minister, and was at the time President 
of Harvard College. 

The educators of the State generally expected that 
Mr. Carter would be made the Secretary of the Board, 
and the appointment of another was the source of much 
surprise and disappointment. This was not without 
reason. If any man could be said to have deserved 
the office, Mr. Carter was the man. His labors as a 
teacher and writer on popular education were univer- 
sally appreciated, and the governor very properly 
placed his name at the head of the list of appointive 
Board members. But Mr. Carter was passed by and 
Horace Mann chosen. Mann had done what he could 
to promote the bill in the Senate, and was well known 
to be an ardent friend of public education; he had 
served as a tutor at Providence, and as member of 
the school committee at Dedham; but he had no 
record that could be compared with Mr. Carter's. It 



110 HORACE MANN 

was not strange, therefore, that his preferment should 
create surprise. The selection of Mr. Mann and his ac- 
ceptance were brought about by Mr. Edmund Dwight, 
a gentleman whom we shall soon have occasion to 
notice more at length. Mr. Dwight, no doubt, appre- 
ciated the peculiar nature of the work to be done by 
the Secretary, and discerned in Mr. Mann peculiar 
fitness for this work. A business man himself of 
great capacity and large enterprises, he knew that a 
man might be a scholar, a teacher, and an able writer 
on education, and yet not possess the peculiar combi- 
nation of qualities that would be necessary to crown the 
creation of the Secretaryship and of the Board of Edu- 
cation with success. Mr. Carter might have made an 
admirable Secretary ; but it cannot be claimed, at this 
distance, that he had ever shown the necessary capa- 
city for the work to be done. Mr. George B. Emerson, 
in the able contribution ^ that he made to the contro- 
versy growing out of Mr. Mann's Seventh Eeport, 
answered in the negative the question, whether it 
would not have been better for the Board to choose 
a Secretary who was engaged in the practical work 
of teaching, basing his answer on general principles 
as well as on special facts. No teacher could, have 
been found so deeply versed as Mr. Mann in the ex- 
ternals of the schools, as the application of the 
laws and the duties of committee men. More than 
this, a teacher would be wedded to his own modes of 
instruction and discipline, and not be likely to possess 
the necessary impartiality. It was one of the great 

1 Observations on a Pamphlet entitled ^^ Remarks on the Seventh 
Annual Report of the Hon. Horace 3fann." Boston, 1844. 



SECKETARY OF MASSACHUSETTS BOARD 111 

lessons of history that reforms in society come almost 
uniformly from abroad. The Board of Education was 
a reform ; and the Board wisely chose for its execu- 
tive of&cer a member of a profession so foreign to 
teaching that he would be able to consider every ques- 
tion from a new point of view. Furthermore, Mr. 
Mann held a prominent place in the State, and his 
mental and moral endowments were pre-eminent. Mr. 
Emerson also found decisive proof of the wisdom of 
the Board in the selection that it made, in Mr. 
Mann's profound and intimate acquaintance with the 
laws and institutions of Massachusetts, acquired espe- 
cially in the preparation of the Eevised Statutes, and 
in his strong humanitarian faith, feeling, and practice. 

Mr. Mann had not for a moment dreamed that he 
would be thought of in connection with the secretary- 
ship, or even thought of himself in such a connection. 
The proposition to elect him Secretary therefore 
struck him with surprise. However, he treated it 
seriously from the beginning. " A most responsible 
and important oflB.ce, " he wrote, " bearing more effect- 
ually, if well executed, upon the coming welfare of 
the State than any other oflfi.ce in it." Two or three 
extracts from his diary and letters will show how his 
mind worked on the subject, revealing his misgivings 
and moral reflections. He wrote, a few days after 
the election was proposed to him: 

" Ought I to think of filling this high and respon- 
sible office? Can I adequately perform its duties? 
Will my greater zeal in the cause than that of others 
supply the deficiency in point of talent and informa- 
tion? Whoever shall undertake that task must en- 



112 HORACE MANN 

counter privation, labor, and an infinite annoyance 
from an infinite number of schemers, etc. , . . 
But should he succeed; should he bring forth the 
germs of greatness and of happiness which Nature 
has scattered abroad, and expand them into maturity, 
and enrich them with fruit; should he be able to 
teach, to even a few of this generation, how mind is 
a god over matter; how, in arranging objects of 
desire, a subordination of the less valuable to the 
more is the great secret of individual happiness ; how 
the whole of life depends upon the scale which we 
form of its relative values, — could he do this, what 
diffusion, what intensity, what perpetuity of blessings 
he would confer ! How would his beneficial influence 
upon mankind widen and deepen as it descended 
forever ! " 

The day that he accepted the office and handed his 
resignation of his membership in the Board to the 
governor, he wrote: 

"Henceforth so long as I hold this office I devote 
myself to the supremest welfare of mankind upon 
earth. An inconceivably greater labor is undertaken. 
With the highest degree of prosperity, results will 
manifest themselves but slowly. The harvest is far 
distant from the seedtime. Faith is the only sus- 
tainer. I have faith in the improvability of the 
race, — in their accelerating improvability. This 
effort may do, apparently, but little. But mere be- 
ginning a good cause is never little. If we can get 
this vast wheel into any perceptible motion, we shall 
have accomplished much. And more and higher 
qualities than mere labor and perseverance will be 



SECRETARY OF MASSACHUSETTS BOARD 113 

requisite. . . . Men can resist the influence of tal- 
ent; they will deny demonstration, if need be: but 
few will combat goodness for any length of time. A 
spirit mildly demoting itself to a good cause is a cer- 
tain conqueror. Love is a universal solvent. Wilful- 
ness will maintain itself against persecution, torture, 
death, but will be fused and dissipated by kindness, 
forbearance, sympathy. Here is a clew given by God 
to lead us through the labyrinth of the world." 

That Horace Mann, at the age of forty-one, should 
be willing to abandon his profession and retire from 
politics for the purpose of accepting the secretaryship 
of the nascent Board of Education, naturally excited 
much surprise. Naturally, also, it has continued to 
excite surprise. The riddle is easy to read. First, 
there is reason to think that he was not enthusiasti- 
cally attached to the legal profession. There is no 
doubt that the law interested him, or that he practised 
it with much success ; but his tone, when he has occa- 
sion to refer to the profession, is never colored by 
that warm devotion which has ever characterized the 
great lawyers. Then the inducement that drew him 
to the new cause was strong, and its nature must not be 
mistaken. It was not scientific interest, or the love 
of knowledge and instruction for their own sake. It 
was rather his abiding faith in the improvability of 
the race, in their accelerating improvability, and his 
faith in education as conducing to that end. He was 
moved by the power of moral ideas; as Mr. Martin 
puts it, " All subjects for him were shadowed by the 
eternities." In accepting the office of Secretary he 
was merely devoting himself to the supremest welfare 
I 



114 HORACE MANN 

of mankind upon earth. So, as soon as practicable, 
he closed up his law office without a pang, and turned 
to his new mission, saying as he did so, "The inter- 
ests of a client are small compared with the interests 
of the next generation. Let the next generation, 
then, be my client." 

There is still another view to be taken of the sub- 
ject. What struck Mr. Mann as most extraordinary 
in relation to the office was, that every man who 
approached him on the subject, with the exception of 
Dr. Channing, asked about the salary that he was to 
receive, or raised the question of honor; while no 
man seemed to recognize the possible usefulness of 
the office, or the dignity and elevation which is in- 
wrought into beneficent action. Many of his friends 
thought his course distinctly foolish. But he went 
on his way unmoved. " If the title is not sufficiently 
honorable now," he wrote, "then it is clearly left for 
me to elevate it; and I had rather be creditor than 
debtor to the title." He wrote to his sister: "If I 
can be the means of ascertaining what is the best 
construction of houses, what are the best books, what 
is the best arrangement of studies, what are the best 
modes of instruction ; if I can discover by what appli- 
ance of means a non-thinking, non-reflecting, non- 
speaking child can most surely be trained into a noble 
citizen ready to contend for the right and to die for 
the right, — if I can only obtain and diffuse through- 
out this State a few good ideas on these and similar 
objects, may I not flatter myself that my ministry 
has not been wholly in vain?" 



CHAPTEE V 

THE SECRETARYSHIP IN OUTLINE 

Mr. Mann served as Secretary of the Massachusetts 
State Board of Education twelve years. It is proposed 
in this chapter to give a general account of his admin- 
istration of the ofi&ce, and then in succeeding chapters 
to present fuller accounts of two or three of its more 
important features. First, however, it will be well 
to describe the more important w^ork that Mr. Mann's 
forerunners had left undone; or, in other words, to 
state the principal questions that immediately con- 
fronted him, growing out of the existing state of 
affairs. 

1. The whole State needed to be thoroughly aroused 
to the importance and value of public instructiou . 

2. The public schools needed to be democratized; 
that is, the time had more than come when they 
should be restored to the people of the State, high as 
well as low, in the good old sense of the name. 

3. The public necessities demanded an expansion 
of public education in respect to kinds of schools and 
range of instruction. 

4. The legal school organization and machinery, as 
existing, were not in harmony with the new social 
conditions. Moreover, current methods of adminis- 
tration were loose and unbusinesslike. 

115 



116 HORACE MANN 

5. The available school funds were quite insuffi- 
cient for maintaining good schools, and called loudly 
for augmentation. 

6. The schools were, to a great extent, antiquated 
and outgrown in respect to the quantity and quality 
of the instruction that they furnished, as well as in 
methods of teaching, management, discipline, and 
supervision.^ 

These are comprehensive propositions, flowing into 
one another. No attempt has been made to state 
them in the order of their ultimate importance, but 
rather in the order of their urgency, and in the order 
of Mr. Mann's fitness to deal with them and of the 
success that crowned his efforts. While he accom- 
plished much for the schools of Massachusetts and 
the country as schools, that is, as places where youth 
are prepared for life, his most obvious and effective 

1 On tine side of supervision this was the situation in 1837, as Mr. 
Maun afterwards described it, drawing his facts from the town 
reports: (1) " In two-thirds of all the towns in the State teachers 
were allowed to commence school without being previously examined 
and approved by the committee as required by law. (2) In many 
cases teachers obtained their wages from the treasurer without 
lodging any duplicate certificate with him, as the law requires. 

(3) The law required committees to prescribe text-books. In one 
hundred towns — a third part in the Commonwealth — this duty was 
neglected, and all the evils incident to a confusion of books suffered. 

(4) The law required committees to furnish books to scholars whose 
parents were unable or had neglected to provide them. In forty 
towns this was omitted, and poor children went to school without 
books. (5) The law required committees to visit the schools a cer- 
tain number of times. From their own statements it appeared that 
out of three hundred towns about two hundred and fifty did not com- 
ply with the law. (6) On an average one-third of all the children of 
the State between the ages of four and sixteen were absent from 
school in the winter, and two-fifths of them in the summer." 



THE SECRETARYSHIP IN OUTLINE 117 

work as an educational reformer was directed to their 
external features and to the system. He must be 
blind indeed who does not see the distinction between 
two classes of men; between such educators as Stein 
and Pestalozzi, Guizot and Frobel. The relative 
rank of the two classes is but a speculative question. 
If Pestalozzij Erobel, and their like, give the world 
new ideaSj it is Stein, Guizot, and their like, who 
make these ideas fruitful in the fullest sense by 
organizing them into institutions. Indeed, the Greeks 
did not differentiate as we do. Plato and Aristotle 
put much of their pedagogical thought in politi- 
cal treatises. Furthermore, the class in which Mr. 
Mann stands necessarily determines the character of 
any work that deals adequately with him. Such a 
work must be the story of practical activities, not 
the exposition of a philosophical or pedagogical 
system. 

Within a week of his acceptance of the office the new 
Secretary began a course of reading bearing upon his 
new duties. He reflected that no man could apply 
himself to any worthy subject, either of thought or of 
action, but that he would forthwith find it develop 
into dimensions and qualities of which before he had 
no conception. His first book was James Simpson's 
Necessity of Popular Education, his second one Miss 
Edgeworth's Practical Education. He found his new 
reading thoroughly delightful ; nothing, he said, 
could be more congenial to his taste, feelings, and 
principles. He also began to study school apparatus, 
writing at the time in his Journal that, on the point 
of bringing apparatus into common use, and thus 



118 HORACE MANN 

substituting real for verbal knowledge, lie must en- 
deavor to effect a lodgement in the public mind. 

Immediately on liis acceptance, Mr. Mann began to 
work out a plan of operations that, when completed, 
was in perfect accord with the spirit of the law that 
created his office. He laid out a campaign that was 
educational in a double sense : it looked ultimately to 
the children and youth of the State, but immediately, 
though in a somewhat different sense, to the people 
of the State. Obviously, the first thing to be done 
was to awaken the public mind from its deep sleep. 
First on his programme, therefore, stood a circuit of 
visits extending through the State, inviting conven- 
tions of instructors, school committees, and all others 
interested in the cause of education, to be held in the 
different counties, and at such time availing himself of 
the opportunity to recommend some improvements, 
and generally to apply a flesh brush to the back of 
the public. His undertaking embraced much more 
than at first appears. There was in Massachusetts, 
as he believed, a great amount of scepticism as to the 
fundamental principles of American government and 
society. Some thought it futile, and some undesir- 
able, to attempt to elevate the masses. As one 
objector put it, the British government was the best 
in the world; classes were essential to society; some 
should be cultivated and refined, but others would 
meet their ends in toil and suffering, in living and 
dying in vulgarity. Such views as these were thor- 
oughly abhorrent to Horace Mann. His political 
principles were in complete accord with his moral 
sentiments. He was a democrat in the best sense of 



THE SECRETARYSHIP IN OUTLINE 119 

that term. He believed that the separation of the 
children of the State in the period of education, — 
some attending the vulgar public schools while others 
go to the select private schools, — was a kind of trea- 
son to American principles; and one of the grand 
features of the educational reform to be wrought, as 
it shaped itself to his imagination, was the restora- 
tion of the common schools to their former honorable 
estate. His wish was to restore the good old custom 
of having the rich and the poor educated together; 
and for that end he desired to make the public schools 
as good as schools could be made, so that the line 
dividing the rich and the poor might not necessarily 
be coincident with that dividing the educated and the 
ignorant. 

In August the Secretary sent out his circulars 
announcing the times and places for holding the 
county conventions, and in October, armed with an 
address entitled " The Means and Objects of Common 
School Education, " — the first of a noble series, — he 
began his circuit. His reports of the conventions, 
while interesting in the extreme, must be taken with 
some allowance. His own glowing ardor led him to 
exaggerate the cold indifference that he encountered. 
He complains that a Barnstable newspaper gave less 
than a square to the educational convention, while 
devoting a full column to a county political conven- 
tion. At Salem no preparations had been made in 
advance; everything dragged, and the convention was 
one of the poorest of the series. One gentleman made 
the sapient suggestion that the Secretary, as he was 
entering upon his new duties, would do well to spend 



120 HOE ACE MANN 

a day in every one of tlie public schools of the State. 
None spoke for what Mann considered the American 
side of the question. He returned to Boston in 
November, and on reaching it wrote in his Journal : 
"My great circuit is now completed. The point to 
which, three months ago, I looked forward with so 
much anxiety, is reached. The labor is done. With 
much weariness, with almost unbounded anxiety, with 
some thwartings, but, on the whole, with unexpected 
and extraordinary encouragement, the work is done. 
That, however, is but the beginning. I confess life 
begins to assume a value which I have not felt for 
five years before." 

On his return from his first missionary tour the 
Secretary prepared, for publication, his first abstract 
of the school returns from the State, and made ready 
his first annual report, which, on the first day of the 
new year, he presented to the Board with fear and 
trembling. Next came his special Report on School- 
houses. Mr. Mann's annual Reports were a most effec- 
tive instrument in reaching and influencing the public 
mind, and they will come before us for separate treat- 
ment. 

In February, 1838, he undertook to inaugurate a 
series of meetings for the teachers of Boston, where 
lectures should be delivered and discussions be held 
with interchanges of experience on educational sub- 
jects. He also continued his popular addresses to the 
public. 

Next in order came the incipient stage of the 
scheme to which the friends of better schools had 
from the first been looking with longing eyes. On 



THE SECRETARYSHIP IN OUTLINE 121 

Marcli 13, 1838, Mr. Mann sent to the legislature 
an official communication, announcing that private 
munificence had placed at his disposal ten thousand 
dollars to promote common school education in Mas- 
sachusetts. The conditions of the gift Avere, that the 
legislature should vote an equal sum, both amounts 
to be used as needed under the direction of the Board 
of Education in qualifying teachers for the common 
schools. The name of the munificent giver was with- 
held. In what way the money should be applied to 
accomplish the end in view, was not even hinted. 
The legislature closed with the proposition, and the 
disposition to be made of the money became at once 
the subject of serious consideration. We find the 
Secretary in conference with committees representing 
various parts of the State in relation to founding 
schools for teachers. "If we get teachers' semina- 
ries," he wrote, "it will not be because they are of 
spontaneous growth." The discussion culminated in 
the establishment of the first Massachusetts Kormal 
schools. These schools rank among Mr. Mann's fore- 
most educational services to the State and country, 
and they richly merit the prominence that only a 
separate chapter can give them. 

At the opening of the autumn season, Mr. Mann 
began his second grand educational tour of the State. 
The address that he delivered at the various conven- 
tions was entitled " Special Preparation a Prerequisite 
to Teaching."^ It became clearer and clearer as he 

1 The five other addresses of this series, published in The Life 
and Works of Horace Mann, bear the following titles : " The Neces- 
sity of Education in a Republican Government ; " " What God Does 



122 . HORACE MANN 

went on liis way that his first great object, the awaken- 
ing of the public mind, was in course of accomplish- 
ment. Others thought his progress a triumphal 
procession, and his own comments are, perhaps, more 
encouraging than they had been the year before. At 
Hanover, where Mr. Eantoul, Mr. Putnam, ex-Presi- 
dent Adams, and Daniel Webster spoke, as well as 
himself, he wrote, "A great day for common schools." 
At Springfield the meeting was miserable, at once dis- 
couraging and repulsive. At Pittsfield the meeting 
was not numerous, but two or three individuals who 
attended were of themselves equal to a meeting. A 
little dent was made in Worcester. At Topsfield it 
was poor in point of numbers, but very good in point 
of respectability. The Taunton convention was a 
grand one. He closed up the circuit with the remark: 
"When I undertook the arduous labor of effecting 
improvements in our common school system up to a 
reasonable and practicable degree, I did so with a 
full conviction that it would require twenty or twenty- 
five years of the continued exertions of some one, ac- 
companied with good fortune, to accomplish the work ; 
and I think I took hold of it with a cordiality and 
resolution which would not be worn out in less than 
a quarter of a century. I am now of the opinion that 
one-twentieth part of the work has been done." 

It has seemed well to give a somewhat particular 
account of the first year of Mr. Mann's secretaryship. 

and What He Leaves for Man to Do in the Work of Education ; " 
" An Historical View of Education, Showing its Dignity and its 
Degradation ; " "On District School Libraries ; " "On School Pun- 
ishments." 



THE SECEETAKYSHIP IN OUTLINE 123 

Henceforth we shall be able to move more rapidly. 
Still it is worth observing, before we begin to hasten 
our steps, that the incidents of Mr. Mann's annual 
circuits, in connection with his comments, are among 
the most interesting things in the history of his work. 
To make an impression in Berkshire, he said, was like 
trying to batter down Gibraltar with one's fist. After 
a meeting at Northampton he wrote: "Ah, me! I 
have hold of so large a mountain that there is much 
danger that I shall break my own back in trying to 
lift it." He said of Barnstable: "I will work in this 
moral, as well as physical, sandbank of a county till 
I can get some new things to grow out of it." At 
Dedham, his former home, the convention was a 
meagre, spiritless, discouraging affair. If the school- 
master was abroad in the county, he said he should 
like to meet him. At Wellfleet the convention was 
miserable, contemptible, deplorable. On a second visit 
to Pittsfield he found that no arrangements had been 
made to prepare the schoolhouse for the meeting; so 
Mr. Mann and Governor Briggs provided themselves 
with brooms, swept out the building, and set things 
in order. These incidents are culled from the records 
of several years. Mr. Mann was annoyed that, while 
as a lawyer or politician he was considered a popular 
speaker, he should awaken so little interest in the 
incomparably greater theme of education. Once he 
said that he queried whether, in regard to two or 
three counties in Massachusetts, it would not be 
advisable to alter the law for quelling riots and 
mobs, and instead of summoning the sheriff and j)osse 
comitatus for their dispersion, to put them to flight 



124 HORACE MANN 

by making proclamation of a discourse on common 
schools. But of course similar lamentations have 
been heard since the days of Plutarch. 

In November, 1838, Mr. Mann brought out the first 
issue of The Common School Journal, which, as he 
said ten years afterwards, " came to the public rather 
as their fate than as a consequence of their free wilL 
It was born, not because it was wanted, but because 
it was needed." It was published semi-monthly, in 
octavo form, each number containing sixteen pages, 
making an annual volume of three hundred and eighty- 
four pages. The subscription price was one dollar a 
year. 

The prospectus of The Journal declared its great 
object to be, the improvement of the common schools 
and other means of education. More definitely, the 
prospectus announced that it would contain the laws 
of the State in relation to education, and the reports, 
proceedings, etc., of the State Board of Education. 
It would explain and enforce upon parents, guar- 
dians, teachers, and school officers their duty towards 
the rising generation. It would urge upon children 
and youth obedience to the laws of health, the culti- 
vation of good behavior, the development and enrich- 
ment of their intellectual faculties, and the control of 
the animal and selfish propensities through the exal- 
tation of the moral and religious sentiments. It 
would shun partisanship in politics, and sectarianism 
in religion, but would vindicate and commend the 
practice of the great and fundamental truths of civil 
and social obligation, of moral and religious duty. 
Its aim would be not so much the discovery of know- 



THE SECRETARYSHIP IN OUTLINE 125 

ledge as its diffusion. Tlie trouble with the country 
was less that few things were known on the subject 
of education than that they were known to but few 
persons. It should, therefore, be the first effort of 
all the friends of education to make known the acces- 
sible body of truth to the largest possible number of 
persons, Tlie Journal was pledged to do what it 
could towards accomplishing this object.^ 

The Common Scliool Journal was more than a worthy 
successor to the educational journals that preceded it. 
The ten annual volumes published under Mr. Mann's 
editorship fully redeemed the generous promises of 
the prospectus. Besides his Reports, he contributed 
scores of valuable articles to its pages. Volume Y. 
of the Life and Worlcs contains more than three hun- 
dred pages of choice "extracts" from The Journal. 
He also laid other able pens under contribution. The 
intelligence published in the successive numbers is 
an important part of the educational history of the 
times, and files of it are eagerly sought for by libra- 
ries and by students of education. 

Looking back to 1837 through sixty years of his- 
tory, we can see that the educational revival in Mas- 
sachusetts, particularly as represented by the State 
Board of Education and its Secretary, was fated to 
encounter violent opposition. Indeed, no great power 
of divination could have been necessary to discover 
at the outset that such opposition would appear and 

1 The first volumes of The Journal were published by Marsh, 
Capen, Lyon, & "Webb ; afterwards the publication passed into the 
hands of "Wm. B. Fowle, who continued it as editor and publisher 
after Mr. Mann's retirement from the Secretaryship. 



126 HORACE MANN 

would assume three forms: one political, one pro- 
fessional, one religious. Very naturally, tlie elements 
of opposition tended strongly to coalesce; still, they 
were so distinct in their sources and history that they 
can be separately treated. The controversies that 
Mr. Mann waged with the Boston schoolmasters and 
religious sectaries demand each a separate chapter; 
the political controversy can be adequately treated in 
this place. 

The act creating the Board of Education was not 
passed without much difficulty. Only Mr. Carter's 
eloquent persuasion and tactful management carried 
it through the House of Eepresentatives. The act 
passed and the Board organized, the opposition waited 
to see what was going to happen. It did not have 
long to wait, because slight provocation answered its 
purpose. Although we have reserved the religious 
controversy for a separate chapter, it is not possible 
wholly to exclude the topic from this place. The 
first murmur of opposition to the Board was awakened 
by the innocent conduct of the Secretary. When on 
his first circuit of the State, Mr. Mann found himself 
one Sunday morning at Edgartown, and as there were 
only orthodox churches in town, which he did not 
care to attend, he went to Chapoquiddic to see the 
Indians, availing himself of the opportunity to show 
an interest in their welfare and to encourage them in 
well-doing. This conduct drew down upon him local 
criticism, one minister, who came into town the next 
day to attend the convention, going so far as to say, 
when he heard that Mr. Mann had not been to church, 
that he would as lief not hear him as hear him, and 



THE SECRETAKYSHIP IN OUTLINE 127 

that Mann, if he did not wish to show a preference 
among the three churches, should have attended them 
all in succession. This is a sorry story, and not worth 
the telling, but it illustrates the temper of the times, 
and suggests the quarter from which the first attack 
was made upon the Board of Education. 

Denominational feelings were strong in those days ; 
and in Massachusetts they were accentuated by the 
bitter controversy that had attended the disruption of 
the Historical Church of the Commonwealth. The loss 
of so many churches, and especially the loss of Har- 
vard College, the fruit of the labors and prayers of 
the Puritans, had embittered the ecclesiastical body 
that now represented the ancient orthodoxy, and made 
its leaders distrustful of any movement that might 
tend still farther to weaken its hold upon society. 
Anxious to avoid sectarian or party prejudice, Mr. 
Mann was always judicious in his public addresses 
and published writings; but it is not impossible that, 
in private conversation, he uttered some of those 
caustic things about the '• godly " and the " orthodox " 
that we find in his diary and letters. At all events, 
it was well known that he was a stanch Unitarian, 
and his early speech in the legislature against reli- 
gious intolerance was probably not forgotten. Educa- 
tion lies proximate to religion — the school to the 
church. It was therefore certain in the beginning 
that keen eyes would closely scrutinize the acts of 
the Board and the Secretary, to discover whether 
they did not in reality constitute an engine of hereti- 
cal propagandism. 

Within a year of the time that the Secretary actually 



128 HOEACE MANN 

entered upon liis work, the religions press opened the 
attack. It was charged that the Board had refused to 
assist in introducing into the common schools the 
American Sunday School Library. The charge was 
also made that the Board held it to be illegal to allow 
books that treated on religious subjects to be put on 
the desks of the schoolrooms. These were sins of 
omission. On the other hand, some religious people 
were extremely jealous of the Board's recommending 
books at all ; while some citizens charged that it was 
the design of the Board to introduce formal religious 
instruction into the schools. Then there were fears 
that the Normal schools would be filled with Unita- 
rian teachers, and that the district libraries would 
contain books of a baneful influence. The plain facts 
will be stated in another place. It is quite clear, 
however, that the Board and its Secretary were called 
upon to walk before the people with much circum- 
spection. 

Still, the opposition did not become dangerous 
until it assumed a political form. It continued to 
grow, however, and declared itself with force in the 
legislature in January, 1840. The new governor had 
come into office on a wave of political revolution. In 
his address he " cut " the Board, to use Mr. Mann's 
word, but suggested that the management of the 
schools should be left to the local authorities. Act- 
ing on this hint, a Committee on Eetrenchment, 
raised in the House of Representatives, recommended 
the abolition of the Board. The matter went to the 
Committee on Education, which recommended the 
abolition of the Board and the Normal schools, and 



THE SECKETARYSHIP IN OUTLINE 129 

the refunding to Mr. Dwight of the money that he 
had given to found these schools. The cry of ex- 
pense was raised so loud that, the Secretary said, if 
Englishmen should hear it they would think the 
Board were trying to surpass the British national 
debt. The Board was denounced as a measure of 
centralization, and the name " Prussian " was applied 
to it. Its purpose, so it was declared, was to substi- 
tute despotic principles for democratic principles. 
The Normal schools were useless, because the acade- 
mies and high schools could prepare all the teachers, 
and the district libraries were harmful because they 
contained no books of religion. The religious sec- 
taries did their utmost to assist the politicians who 
were resolved on revoking the recent legislation. 
The moment was a most anxious one. However, the 
attack was repelled with vigor, and when the division 
came "the bigots and vandals," as Mann called them, 
received only 182 votes to 245 cast on the other side. 
The result gave the friends of progress the liveliest 
satisfaction. Apparently, Mr. Mann had not expected 
the onslaught to succeed; but he anticipated that it 
would end in alienating a part of the public from the 
cause, which it would cost him another year of labor 
to reclaim.^ 

The legislative leader in the attack upon the Board 
in 1840 was dropped by his constituency at the next 
election. Still, the opposition did not at once sub- 

1 The documentary history of the struggle of 1840 is found in 
The Common School Journal, Vol. II., pp. 224-248: the reports, 
both majority and minority, of the Committee on Education, the 
two leading speeches pro and con, and a selection of letters from 
leading educators. 



130 HOEACE MANN 

side. The governor was not satisfied with the way 
things were going. So, at the next session, a bill 
was brought in that proposed to transfer the powers 
and duties of the Board to the governor and council, 
and of the Secretary to the Secretary of State. Again 
religious bigotry was at the bottom of the movement. 
One can hardly blame Mr. Mann for writing in his 
diary : " Thus another blow is aimed at our existence, 
and by men who would prefer that good should not be 
done rather than that it should be done by men whose 
views on religious subjects differ from their own. 
The validity of their claim to Christianity is in the 
inverse ratio to the claim itself; they claim the 
whole, but possess nothing." Eetrenchment of ex- 
penses was the political hobby of the year, and both 
parties, Mann said, ran a race for the laurel of econ- 
omy, and were willing to sacrifice all the laurels of 
the State to win it. The attack was strongly repelled, 
like the previous one; and, although the final vote 
was taken at an inopportune time for the Board and 
Secretary, the bill received only 114 votes to 151 cast 
against it. 

This was the end of practical opposition. It was 
most fortunate not only for the educational interests 
of Massachusetts, but for the educational interests of 
the country as a whole, that the victory rested where 
it did. In some other States, about the same time, 
reactionary measures prevailed, and the cause of edu- 
cation received a severe backset. 

Schools and education in the technical sense of the 
words by no means fully measured the movement for 
democratizing knowledge that set in early in the 



THE SECRETARYSHIP IN OUTLINE 131 

present century. Cheap books, cheap periodicals, 
cheap postage, and circulating libraries were impor- 
tant parts of the moyement. For example, the Society 
for the Diffusion of Knowledge was organized in Eng- 
land in 1837, Lord Brougham contributing the first 
book on the list. The Pleasures and Advantages oj 
Science. The district school library of the United 
States proposed to unite the school with the wider 
means of cultivation. 

To Governor De Witt Clinton, of New York, that 
enlightened friend of popular intelligence, is due the 
credit of first recommending such libraries, which he 
did in his annual message to the legislature in 1827.^ 
Still it was not until 1835 that the legislature of 
IsTew York authorized the taxable inhabitants of the 
several school districts to impose a tax of not exceed- 
ing twenty dollars a year for the first year, or ten 
dollars a year thereafter, for the purchase of a dis- 
trict library, consisting of such books as they should 
in their district meeting direct. This was the real 
beginning of a movement that, in fifteen years, placed 
1,600,000 books within the reach of the school chil- 
dren of the State of New York. Almost at once 
other States began to emulate the Empire State, and 
district school libraries soon overspread the land. 
Horace Mann's vivid remembrance of the advantages 
that he had received from the small library which 
Dr. Franklin gave to Mann's native town, not to 

1 The following are Goyernor Clinton's words: "The scale of 
instruction must be elevated ; . . . small and suitable collections of 
books and maps attached to our common schools, and periodical 
examinations to test the proficiency of the scholars and the merits 
of the teachers are worthy of attention." 



132 HORACE MANN 

speak of other causes, would naturally predispose 
him to look with favor upon the proposition. He 
espoused it with enthusiasm and adhered to it with 
persistence. 

The same legislature that created the Massachusetts 
Board of Education authorized the school districts to 
tax themselves for the purchase of apparatus and com- 
mon school libraries, the amount of the tax not to 
exceed thirty dollars for the first year and ten dollars 
for any succeeding year. Eeferring to this action 
in his first convention address, the Secretary said, 
although the provision made seemed trifling, yet he 
regarded the law as hardly second in importance to 
any that had been passed since the Act of 1647 
created the common schools of the State. 

But the authority conferred by the law was permis- 
sive only, and the people were slow to act. Thinking 
that this was largely due to popular fear that the 
books purchased would be channels for propagating 
partisan and sectarian views, Mr. Mann proposed, in 
March, 1838, to the Board of Education that it should 
itself take measures for the preparation of a suitable 
common school library. This proposition was re- 
ceived with favor, and steps were immediately taken 
to carry it into effect.^ The Secretary now set himself 
to ascertain, by careful investigation, the number 
of public libraries in the State, the number of vol- 
umes that each contained, their estimated value, and 
the number of persons who had the right of access to 
them. Space cannot be found here for the reproduc- 

1 The Board did not, however, attempt to print the books ; it 
selected them, and left the rest to private enterprise. 



THE SECRETARYSHIP IN OUTLINE 133 

tion of the statistics that were gathered. Sufhce it 
to say, the results surpassed in all respects his worst 
apprehensions. He contrasted the existing libraries 
and the proposed common school libraries much to 
the disadvantage of the former. The existing libra- 
ries were owned and controlled by the rich and well- 
to-do; the new ones would reach the poor. The first 
were prepared for adult and educated minds; the sec- 
ond would instruct young and unenlightened minds. 
"By the former," he said, "books are collected in 
great numbers at a few places having broad deserts 
between; by the latter a few good books are to be 
sent into every school district in the State, so that 
not a child shall be born in our beloved Common- 
wealth who shall not have a collection of good books 
accessible to him at all times, and free of expense, 
within half an hour's walk of his home wherever he 
may reside." 

The Secretary continued to press the subject with 
vigor. He devoted to it, in its various aspects, the 
major part of his Keport for the year 1839. He saw 
clearly the fact that has been so much insisted upon 
in recent years, — that the common schools have only 
begun their work when they have taught the children 
of the land the- art of reading, and that it is equally 
their duty to give them a taste for good reading and 
some critical capacity for discovering what is worth 
reading and what is not. Mr. Mann deprecated the 
reading of history by children, at least as history 
has been generally written. After enumerating some 
of the best works of this class, then current, he ex- 
claimed: "And how little do these books contain 



134 HORACE MANN 

which is suitable for children ! How little do they 
record but the destruction of human life and the 
activity of those misguided energies of men which 
have hitherto almost baffled the beneficent intentions 
of Nature for human happiness ! " Those persons 
who think the popular literary taste is all the time 
declining may pluck up courage from the perusal of 
Mr. Mann's description of the literature that was 
most sought after at the libraries in his time. " Fic- 
tion," "light reading," "trashy works," "bubble lit- 
erature," etc., are the names that he bestows upon 
the books that were most in demand. Such books 
had increased immeasurably within twenty years, and 
he was satisfied that the larger part of the unprofes- 
sional reading of the community was of this class of 
works. Verily, the deterioration of the human race 
in strength and virtue does go back to the days of 
Nestor ! The legislature in 1842 offered to every 
school district in the State a premium of fifteen dol- 
lars for the founding or extension of a district library, 
provided it would raise, by a district tax, an equal 
sum for the same object. At this time, it is said, 
one-fourth of the towns formed libraries, and the 
next year the privilege of the act was extended to 
cities and towns not cut up into school districts. 
Mr. Mann eulogized this legislation warmly in The 
Common School Journal. It must, however, be said 
that the district school library in the end fell far 
short of his glowing expectations. Applications for 
the State bounty reached their maximum in 1843, 
and continued to decline until 1850, when the law 
was repealed. The subject now assumed a new form : 



THE SECRETARYSHIP IN OUTLINE 135 

the school libraries were superseded by the free 
town libraries, which have proved so eminently suc- 
cessful. 

The district school library, upon the whole, did not 
meet expectations. In some States it was more suc- 
cessful than in others. It has now generally passed 
away. To discover the reasons for its comparative 
failure is an inquiry lying beyond the range of this 
work. But the truth of history requires that two or 
three things shall be said. In their time, these libra- 
ries supplied a great number of people — children, 
youth, and adults — with a store of excellent reading 
matter that, otherwise, they could not have enjoyed. 
They were an anticipation, no doubt vague and unsat- 
isfactory, of the idea now so well defined, that the 
library is an invaluable auxiliary to the school. They 
prepared the way for the free public library, which 
has come to be an inseparable adjunct of a good 
school system, and a necessity to every progressive 
American community that is large enough to support 
it. Horace Mann therefore made no mistake when 
he pleaded for the children's library with an elo- 
quence equal to that with which he pleaded for the 
teachers' Normal school.^ 

Mr. Mann's promptness to adopt ideas and appli- 
ances that others originated is illustrated by his in- 

1 On school district libraries, see The Life and Works of Horace 
Mann, Vol. XL, pp. 61, 297, 378, Vol. III., pp. 45, 374, Vol V., pp. 202, 
215; Kiddle and Schem, The Cyclopsedia of Education, article 
" Libraries " ; S. S. Randall, History of the Common School System, 
of the State of Neio York, passim ; Public Libraries in the United 
States of America, etc., Washington, 1876, Chap. II. ; Report of 
the Commissioner of Education, 1895, 1896, Chaps. VIIL, IX. 



136 HORACE MANN 

troduction into Massachusetts of a new instrument of 
educational power that was invented over the border 
in Connecticut. In this field there is no such thing 
as plagiarism. 

On his election as Secretary of the Connecticut 
Board of Education, Dr. Henry Barnard made an 
immediate attempt to found a jSTormal school, and 
failed. Defeated but not disma-yed, conscious also 
of the gross incapacity of a majority of teachers in 
the schools of the State, he cast about him to see if 
anything could be done, and, if so, what, to furnish 
some immediate, if partial and temporary, relief. He 
undertook, at his own expense, " to show the practica- 
bility of making some provision for the better qualifi- 
cation of common school teachers, by giving them an 
opportunity to revise and extend their knowledge of 
the studies usually pursued in district schools, and 
of the best methods of school arrangements, instruc- 
tion, and government under the recitations and lect- 
ures of experienced and well-known teachers and 
educators." He called together such of the male 
teachers of Hartford County as saw fit to respond to 
his circular, twenty-six in number, in what he called 
a "convention," and together with his helpers pro- 
ceeded to give them the instruction that they needed. 
This was in 1839 ; the next year Mr. Barnard held a 
similar convention for lady teachers. Such was the 
origin of the teachers' institute, long one of the 
characteristic features of our American system of 
schools. Apparently Mr. Barnard thought only of a 
temporary expedient, but he builded better than he 
knew. His example was quickly followed. The first 



THE SECRETARYSHIP IN OUTLINE 137 

institute in Kew York, and the first to bear the name 
in the country, was held in 1843 ; the first in Massa- 
chusetts and Ohio in 1845 ; the first in Michigan in 
1846. Dr. Barnard did more than simply to call the 
institute into being — he determined practically its 
form and object as now carried on.^ 

In 1844 Mr. Mann drew the attention of the Board 
of Education to the subject of institutes. He had 
been particularly impressed by the nascent institute 
organization of New York, as he had been by the whole 
school system of that State. ^' We have borrowed her 
system of school libraries," " she has borrowed our sys- 
tem of Normal schools," he said ; ''let us now adopt 
the system of teachers' institutes which she has pro- 
jected, and thus maintain that noble rivalry of bene- 
factions which is born of philanthropy ; that cares 
more for the good that is done than it does who are 
the devisers, the agents, or the recipients of it." The 
next year the same generous citizen who had contributed 
to founding the Normal schools put at the Secretary's 
disposal $1000 to be used in making an experiment, 
and with this money four institutes were held in as 
many counties in the autumn of 1845, the first one at 
Pittsfield. In 1846 the legislature appropriated $2500 
for the expenses of institutes, putting the money at 
the disposal of the State Board. Afterwards this 

1 On teachers' institutes, see the following: Henry Barnard, 
Normal Schools and Other Institutions, Agencies, and Means de- 
signed for the Professional Preparation of Teachers, Hartford, 
1851 ; The American Journal of Education, Vol. VIII., p. 673, Vol. 
XIV., p. 25.3, Vol. XV., pp. 276, 405, Vol. XXII., p. 557 ; J. H. Smart, 
Teachers' Institutes ; A Circular of Information of the Bureau of 
Education. Washington, 1885. 



138 HORACE MANN 

sum was increased, and the conditions governing its 
use made more liberal. 

Mr. Mann was an efficient institute lecturer and 
instructor himself. Nor did he ever lose faith in this 
means of instructing and inspiring teachers. In an 
address delivered at Cincinnati, in 1854, he said, all 
persons who wished well to colleges must wish well to 
common schools, and do all that lay in their power to 
elevate their character. Because he felt the weight of 
this obligation, he had spent, he said, the greater part 
of the long summer vacation attending institutes in 
Ohio and other States teaching teachers how to 
teach. 

In May, 1843, Mr. Mann was married to Miss Mary 
Peabody, and immediately sailed for Europe. He was 
moved to pay this visit to the Old World partly by his 
belief that he could do most for education at home by 
studying education abroad, and partly by the miserable 
state of his health. He had now carried on his great 
work six years. ISTor was this all. He had continued 
to take a lively interest in the measures of social 
reform that interested him. It is not strange, there- 
fore, that his "whole capital of health" was ex- 
hausted, or that his brain, as Dr. Howe described it, 
had come "to go alone." Unfortunately, the physical 
benefits that he derived from his visit abroad did not 
meet his own or his friends' expectations, for he soon 
discovered that absorption in European schools was 
almost as exhausting as absorption in American schools. 
The better to accomplish his purpose, many of the 
great thoroughfares of travel, and most of the attrac- 
tive objects that ordinary travellers sought out, were 



THE SECRETARYSHIP IN OUTLINE 139 

left untrodden or unseen. He was always heedful of 
Ms mission, keeping his mind in perpetual contact 
with the great interests of mankind, and seeing the 
institutions out of which human characters arise as 
vegetation grows out of the soil. He visited England, 
Ireland, and Scotland; Germany, Holland, and France. 
In respect to education, he ranked the countries that 
he visited in this order: Prussia, Saxony, and the 
western and southwestern States of Germany; Hol- 
land and Scotland; Ireland, France, and Belgium, 
with England at the foot of the list. On his return 
home, at the end of six months, he embodied his 
observations and reflections in his Seventh Eeport, 
which circumstances at least, if not merit, conspired 
to render the most celebrated of all his Reports. 

Mr. Mann's indefatigable labors at home did not 
prevent his visiting other States, both to study the 
progress that they were making in education and to 
lend the friends of the cause a helping hand. He 
was called upon to deliver addresses from far and near, 
and his not unfrequent responses were much appreci- 
ated. Thus Professor Griscom reports meeting him 
in a convention of superintendents and teachers held 
at Utica, New York, in the spring of 1842. Griscom 
wrote in his autobiography that Mann had then 
"acquired a reputation for a philanthropic devotion 
to the great cause of education and for a profound 
skill in all the practical details of instruction, unri- 
valled by any other person in the United States. He 
pursued the subject co7i amove. His speeches in the 
convention, as well as the written lecture delivered in 
the church, furnished the most decisive evidences of a 



140 HOEACE MANN 

mind affluent in bright and just conceptions, eloquent, 
racy, and commanding, yet modest and restrained in 
manner. No man, perhaps, has viewed the subject of 
schools under more varied aspects, or is better quali- 
fied to give an opinion best adapted to our country." ^ 
With a single exception we have now described, or 
at least referred to, Mr. Mann's principal labors in the 
Secretary's office, viz., the annual circuits of the State, 
the annual abstracts of statistics and the Reports, the 
occasional addresses and lectures, the conferences with 
the Board and members of the legislature, the over- 
sight of the Normal schools and of the district libraries, 
the defence of the Board and its Secretary against con- 
troversial attacks, and The Common School Journal. 
The exception referred to is the correspondence, official 
and personal, that the office entailed upon him, which 
was by no means confined to the State of Massachu- 
setts. Somewhere in the documents the average cor- 
respondence of the office is stated as being from thirty 
to forty letters a day. Surely here was work for an 
able man of vigorous health, supported by adequate 
clerical help. But, first, Mr. Mann was not in vigorous 
health. Mr. Fowle, his friend and publisher, testifies 
that Mann's labors were so excessive that he had 
known him to be unable to sleep for weeks at a time. 
Then he was not supported by any clerical help what- 
ever, save such as he procured at his own expense. 
Sixteen hours was a common day's work for him. 
Only a man of great native and acquired power of 
accomplishment could have turned off so much work, 

1 Memoir of John Griscom, LL.D., etc. New York, 1859, pp. 
295, 296. 



THE SECRETARYSHIP IN OUTLINE 141 

of such, a higli quality, during the twelve years that he 
held the office. 

Still another source of surprise remains to be men- 
tioned. This is the miserable allowance that the State 
of Massachusetts made for his services. The Act of 
1837, creating the Board of Education, authorized no 
expenditure of money beyond a reasonable compensa- 
tion for the services of the secretary to be elected, 
not exceeding $1000 per annum. Mr. Mann expected 
that his salary would be made $2500 for the first year, 
and after that $3000. The legislature finally fixed 
the salary at $1500, but made no provision whatever 
for contingent expenses, not even for office rent. 
Mann estimated that the salary would leave for his 
ordinary expenses and services, after defraying his 
extraordinary expenses, about $500 a year. His com- 
ment was, '^Well, one thing is certain, I will be 
revenged on them ; I will do them more than $1500 
worth of good." 

But this is only the beginning of the story. When 
the time came for the legislature to provide for sta- 
tionery and postage, Mr. Mann did not charge to the 
State one-half of the real cost, lest a large expense 
account should raise up enemies to the office. Such 
books as he needed to carry on his work, he purchased 
and paid for himself. Five years passed before any 
allowance was made for his travelling expenses over 
the State, although he was thus employed four months 
in the year. Still more, he was a constant contributor 
out of his own pocket to the cause that lay so near his 
heart. He actually paid his own money, several hun- 
dred dollars at a time, to complete, repair, or furnish 



142 HORACE MANN 

the buildings of every one of the three Normal schools 
when the public funds proved to be insufficient. On 
one occasion he sold his law library at much less than 
its value to enable him to make the gift. He pro- 
vided all these schools with needed maps at his own 
expense. He paid the State printers for such extra 
copies of his own Keports as he wished to circulate 
outside of the regular channels. The Common ScJiool 
Journal, which he would never have undertaken had 
not such a channel of communication with the public 
been necessary, was a constant drain upon him to the 
close of the fourth volume, although he gave away 
single numbers, and even whole sets, with the greatest 
liberality. He visited Europe in the public interest, 
but at his own charges ; and on his return refused the 
proposition of a competent publisher to print his notes 
in book form for the market, saying that he was a 
public officer, and that the public was entitled to these 
notes free of charge ; and so he threw the matter into 
his Seventh Eeport. His custom was to hold four or 
five conventions where the State met the expenses of 
only one, and the same with the institutes when their 
time came. 

This story of self-sacrifice becomes pathetic when 
taken in connection with Mr. Mann's financial condi- 
tion at the time when he entered upon the duties of 
his office, growing out of the financial responsibilities 
that he had assumed on account of his unfortunate 
brother. All his savings were swept away, and he 
was left as necessitous as the unfortunate brother 
himself. He gave up his boarding house, put a bed 
in a room adjoining his office, took care of the room 



THE SECRETARYSHIP IN OUTLINE 143 

Mmselfj and picked up his living, apparently, here 
and there. Thus he lived three full years. For six 
months, he says, he was unable to buy a dinner on 
half the days. Suffering from hunger and exhaustion 
and overworked, he fell ill, and so continued for two 
months ; his best friends did not expect his recovery, 
and some of them, as he believed, deprecated it as the 
infliction of further suffering. His privations and ill- 
ness still further weakened a constitution that had been 
broken down while he was preparing for college. It is 
indeed to be said that the generous friend who brought 
about his appointment as Secretary, and who contrib- 
uted so generously to the Normal schools and teachers' 
institutes, added f 500 a year to his meagre resources. 
It is not strange therefore that, on Mr. Mann's 
retirement from the office in 1848, some friends in 
the legislature proposed that the State should repay 
him some part of the outlay that he had incurred in 
its interest. He replied that he could not ]3i^esent 
himself in the form of a petitioner, asking for a 
return of what was voluntarily given. He must take 
care of his honor. The State was the proper judge 
of its own. If the State chose to consider any part 
of the sums he had paid as paid on its account, it 
would be gratefully received, both as a token of its 
approbation and as the refunding of money he must 
otherwise lose; ^^but let what will come," he closed 
with saying, "no poverty and no estimate of my ser- 
vices, however low, can ever make me repine that I 
have sought with all the means and the talents at my 
command to lay broader and deeper the foundation 
of the prosperity of our Commonwealth, and to ele- 



144 HORACE MANN 

vate its social and moral character among its confed- 
erate States and in the eyes of the world.'^ The 
legislature accordingly voted him, without a single 
dissenting voice in either House, a part of the money 
that he had spent for the public good. The com- 
mittee that reported the resolution said it was not 
proposed to pay him off, or to rob him of the well- 
earned conviction that he was a benefactor of the 
State; the amount was made small because the com- 
mittee believed that a small amount would be more 
agreeable to his feelings than a larger one. 

It is easy for the carping critic at this day to say 
that Horace Mann was not called upon thus to sacri- 
fice himself for the public good of Massachusetts ; 
thatj in the long run, he would only injure the cause, 
and the State by encouraging it in small ideas and 
little ways. We must remember, however, that the 
cause of popular education was feeble in 1837-1848 
as compared with the closing years of the century. 
We must remember, also, the circumspection with 
which both the Board and the Secretary were com- 
pelled to acquit themselves in their official capacities. 
There is no telling what plans and prospects of future 
good might have been overturned in those precarious 
times if a few hundred dollars more had been charged 
up to the State in the Secretary's expense account.. 
Still, this is only an economical view of the subject. 
Sacrifices like these are incident to the life of any 
man who takes the next generation for his client. 
Such a man, like the Great Apostle, will not count his 
life dear unto himself, so that he may finish with joy 
the ministry that he has received. 



CHAPTER VI 

THE MASSACHUSETTS NORMAL SCHOOLS 

Normal school is the unfortunate name that is 
given in the United States and some other countries 
to a school intended for the professional preparatiom 
of teachers. The word '^ normal" is derived fromi 
norm, noima, meaning rule, pattern, model, or stand- 
ard, and signifies, in general, serving to fix a rule 
or standard. A ISTormal school, therefore, has to do 
with fixing the norm or rule of teaching ; but whether 
the name was given because the school was expected 
formally to teach the norm, to exemplify it in prac- 
tice, or to do both of these things, histor}- does not 
inform us. It will perhaps answer the purpose of 
all but the curious to state, that the Xormal school 
devotes itself, in part at least, to teaching the prin- 
ciples and the rules of teaching. We borrowed the 
name, but not the thing, from France, where it came 
into vogue at the time of the E, evolution.-^ 

In view of the obvious advantages of such a school, 

1 Edward Everett said : " The name was adopted to designate the 
schools for teachers established in Massachusetts, because it is 
already in use to denote similar institutions in Europe; because it 
applies exclusively to schools of this kind, and prevents their being 
confounded with any others ; and because it is short and of conven- 
ient use. It has been already adopted in England and in our sister 
States in writing and speaking of institutions for the education of 
teachers." — Address on Normal Schools. 
L 145 



146 HORACE MANN 

it is strange that we meet with it for the first time 
at such a late date in educational history. Demia, of 
Lyons^ appears to have established in that city a sort 
of seminary for teaching teachers about the year 1675. 
But the credit of establishing the first Normal school 
is commonly ascribed to the Abbe de La Salle, founder 
of the Institute of the Christian Brethren. In 1685 
this noble priest and educator opened at Eheims an in- 
stitution that he called a seminary for schoolmasters, 
and at a later day a second one at Paris. Still the sys- 
tem of Normal schools now existing in France does 
not date from the close of the seventeenth century; 
the idea never took a real hold of the French mind 
until the Eevolution set in motion the forces that 
have democratized education. 

But it is to Germany that we must look for the 
historical antecedents of our American Normal schools. 
The German system of such schools became well es- 
tablished in Prussia in the reign of Frederick the 
Great, and went forth from that country to subdue 
the world. Even France, in a sense, is indebted to 
Germany for her Normal schools. In Germany the 
school is known, however, as the teachers' seminary, 
and in England and Scotland as the teachers' train- 
ing school or training college. Perhaps there is a 
suggestion of the French mind in the use, in this 
connection, of the word "normal." 

The second chapter of this work shows that the 
qualifications of teachers had a stronger hold on Horace 
Mann's forerunners than any other educational idea. 
From Ticknor to Carter it was the burden of their cry. 
But down to 1835 there is no direct evidence showing 



THE MASSACHUSETTS NORMAL SCHOOLS 147 

that American educators were acquainted with what 
had been done in tliis line in Europe. There is no 
reference to it in the several writings that have been 
referred to in Chapter II. The German teachers' 
seminary was introduced to the American public in 
a very simple, and yet in a very interesting, way. 
Rev. Charles Brooks, pastor of a church at Hing- 
ham, Massachusetts, while on his outward voyage to 
Europe, in the autumn of 1834, had for a companion 
Dr. H. Julius, then returning from a mission to study 
the prison systems of the United States on which he 
had been sent by the Prussian government, and from 
him he learned the details of the Prussian educa- 
tional system. When in Germany Mr. Brooks im- 
proved the opportunity to extend his knowledge of 
a subject that had interested him deeply, and on his 
return home he entered upon an extended educa- 
tional mission, having for its object the improvement 
of common schools. In 1835-1837 he addressed 
many meetings in different parts of Massachusetts, in 
which he gave an account of the Prussian system of 
public instrucdon, and advocated the establishment of 
a State Xormal school. Nor w^ere Mr. Brooks' labors 
confined to his own State : he extended his mission to 
New Hampshire, Vermont, Connecticut, Ehode Island, 
New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. To few men do the 
American Normal schools owe so much as to Charles 
Brooks. 

The Normal school idea had gained such headway in 
Massachusetts in 1838 that Mr. Edmund Dwight's ^ 

1 Mr. Edmund Dwight, graduated at Yale College, was one of the 
merchant prmces of Boston. He was destined for the bar, but took 



148 HORACE MANN 

generous offer to give the State $10,000 to promote 
the preparation of teachers for the common schools, 
provided the legislature would appropriate an equal 
amount for the same object, was immediately accepted 
by an almost unanimous vote of both houses. Gov- 
ernor Everett signed the resolution April 19, 1838 — 
the anniversary of the battle of Lexington. But this 
was not the only suggestion of that battle that the his- 
tory furnishes, as we shall soon see. The manner of 
using the money given by Mr. Dwight and voted by the 
legislature was committed wholly to the discretion of 
the Board of Education. Several questions of impor- 
tance at once presented themselves. Should the Board 
concentrate its efforts upon a single central Normal 
school ? Should it establish two or more schools ? 
Should it do what had been done in New York, sup- 
port normal instruction, or normal departments in dif- 
ferent academies of the State ? There were argu- 
ments pro and con on all of these plans of proceeding. 
To the single school it could be objected that it would 
be hidden away from the sight of a majority of the 
people of the State ; while the New York plan was 

rather to business. He was a man of broad ideas and great gener- 
osity, and became deeply interested in the common schools. After 
reading Mrs. Austin's translation of M. Victor Cousin's Report on 
the Schools ofPrusdu, to promote education became a leading object 
of his life. His house in Boston was a centre for meetings and con- 
sultations relating to the subject, and for many years hardly an 
important step was taken relating to it without his advice. He se- 
cured Mr. Mann's election to the Secretaryship, as already related. 
In all his contributions for enlarging and improving the State system 
of common schools were not less than $35,000. Memoir of Edmund 
Dwight, by Frances Bowen. — Barnard, The American Journal of 
Education, Vol. IV., pp. 5-22. 



THE MASSACHUSETTS NORMAL SCHOOLS 149 

open to the serious criticism that the normal depart- 
ments would almost of necessity be called secondary 
features of the academies in which they should be 
placed. So the Board, after due deliberation, wisely 
decided to establish three Normal schools — one in the 
northeastern, one in the southeastern, and one in the 
western part of the State, to be conducted as an ex- 
periment for three years. To supplement the slender 
funds, the Board called for local co-operation, and 
many towns made responses more or less generous, 
some of them even offering to provide all the means 
necessary for establishing and carrying on the schools, 
save alone the salaries of the teachers. The Board 
soon voted to open a school for ladies only at Lex- 
ington, and another school for both sexes at Barre. 
The Lexington school was twice removed before it 
found an abiding resting place, first to West New- 
ton and then to Framingham. The Barre school 
was subsequently transferred to Westfield. The 
third of the Horace Mann Normal schools, more 
fortunate, was established at Bridgewater and never 
removed. 

Here our narrative may well halt long enough to 
permit the mention of the splendid services to public 
education rendered by private generosity in the days 
of the Common School Eevival. The rich gifts of Mr. 
Dwight, already mentioned, are good examples. They 
were by no means exceptional ; other liberal-minded 
men, both in and out of Massachusetts, vied with 
him in his noble generosity. New York furnished a 
conspicuous example in the person of Gen. James 
Wadsworth, of Geneseo, who gave large sums to pro- 



150 HORACE MANN 

mote popular education iu that State.^ These facts 
were typical of the time. If, in recent years, such 
examples have been less frequent, it is doubtless due 
to the firm hold that the public school system has 
gained on society, thereby enabling the generosity of 
private benefactors to turn in other directions, rather 
than to the decay of public spirit and private liber- 
ality. 

To follow the ups and downs of these schools to the 
close of Mr. Mann's secretaryship would trench too 
heavily upon our space. ISTor is it at all necessary. To 
present the salient features of their history is all that 
is here called for. 

The schools raised up enemies. Some people op- 
posed them because they would draw candidates for 
teaching away from the academies. Some because 
they were new and untried. Some, and these princi- 
pally teachers, because they had never attended such 
schools themselves. Some because the schools did not 
teach religion. Some because they were under Uni- 
tarian influence. Some because they did not approve 
of the demeanor of the lady students. Some because 
the schools were unnecessary and a needless ex- 
pense. Naturally the close of the three years' experi- 
ment was looked forward to by Mr. Mann and his 

1 General Wadsworth was graduated at Yale College, and, taking 
to business, became the proprietor of a great landed estate in west- 
ern New York. His educational activities assumed various forms. 
He is called the author of the New York system of district school 
libraries. He contributed liberally to the circulation of educational 
literature, often paying for whole editions of books or periodicals 
out of his own pocket, in order that they might be widely circu- 
lated. His gifts to popular education reached $90,000. — Barnard, 
The American Journal of Education, Vol. V., pp. 389-406. 



THE MASSACHUSETTS NORMAL SCHOOLS 151 

friends with much anxiety. It was perfectly clear 
thatj if the schools were to be permanently continued, 
the State must fully adopt them as a part of its sys- 
tem of public instruction, for private support, indi- 
vidual or communal, would soon be withdrawn. The 
enemies of the schools were quick to take advantage 
of such of the old opposition to the Board of Educa- 
tion as had not died out, and the issue was far from 
clear. But, as before, the cause of progress triumphed. 
E/ebounding from the depression of spirits that the 
period of anxiety enforced upon him, Mr. Mann wrote 
on March 3, 1842 : " The brightest days which have 
ever shone upon our cause were yesterday and to-day. 
Yesterday resolves passed the House for granting 
$6000 per year for three years to the Normal schools, 
and $15 to each district for a school library, on condi- 
tion of its raising $15 for the same purpose." And 
again March 8 : " The joy I feel on account of the 
success of our plans for the schools has not begun to 
be exhausted. It keeps welling up into my mind, 
fresh and exhilarating as it was the first hour of its 
occurrence. I have no doubt it will have an effect on 
my health as well as my spirits. The wearisome, de- 
pressing labor of watchfulness which I have under- 
gone for years has been a vampire to suck the blood 
out of my heart and the marrow out of my bones. I 
should, however, have held on until death, for I felt 
my grasp all the time tightening, not loosening. I 
hope I may now have the power of performing more 
and better labor." 

There was further opposition to the Normal schools, 
but with the renewal of the State appropriation in 1845 



152 HORACE MANI? 

it practically died out. The legislature was not swerved 
from the path that Mr. Dwight's wise liberality had 
induced it to enter. In 1846 Mr. Mann saw, with 
feelings of lively satisfaction, every one of the three 
schools occup3dng its own house, — neat, commodious, 
and well adapted to its wants, — and the principals 
relieved of the annoyance, as he said, of carrying on 
Normal schools in a6-normal houses. At this time he 
wrote his friend, Kev. S. J. May, that the normal cause 
was so vv^ell anchored that no storm which its enemies 
could conjure up, would drive it from its moorings. 
Mr. Mann also expressed the belief that, at the time, 
Massachusetts was the only State in the Union where 
Normal schools could have been established, or where, 
if established, they would have been allowed to remain. 
Mr. Mann was naturally solicitous about the selec- 
tion of the Normal school teachers, and especially 
those for Lexington. The Board left the matter wholly 
in his hands. The choice made would be a factor in 
future history. Writing to George Combe, he calls 
the amount of anxiety that the selection of the two 
first principals caused him incredible. He went over 
all the men in New England by tale before he found 
those who would take the schools with a fair prospect 
of success in managing them. The problem was to do 
right and not offend the ultra-orthodox. For Lexing- 
ton, he made choice of Rev. Cyrus Pierce, finding him 
among the sands of Nantucket. The choice was a 
very happy one. A competent judge, who knew Pierce 
on the South Shore, said he could always tell his 
scholars wherever he met them by their mental habits 
and mode of life. He excelled in training both the 



THE MASSACHUSETTS NORMAL SCHOOLS 153 

mental and moral nature. Mann himself said of 
Pierce's power of winning the confidence of his 
pupils, that it surpassed what he had before seen in 
any school. " The exercises were conducted," he said, 
"in the most thorough manner: the principle being 
stated and then applied to various combinations of 
facts, so that the pupils were not only led to a clearer 
apprehension of the principle itself, but taught to look 
through combinations of facts, however different, to 
find the principle which underlies them all ; and they 
were taught, too, that it is not the form of the fact 
which determines the principle, but the principle 
which gives character to the fact." Pierce was an 
ardent phrenologist. ''The book to which, after the 
Bible, I owe most," he said, '4s that incomparable work 
of George Combe, On the Constitution of 3Ian. It was 
to me a most suggestive book, and I regard it as the 
best treatise on education and the philosophy of man 
which I ever met with." ^ Pierce's motto was, " Live 
to the truth." 

The Massachusetts Normal schools certainly came 
without observation. The Lexington school opened 
July 3, 1839, in the midst of a heavy downpour of 
rain, with only three persons present for examination. 
The prospect was in no way encouraging. The first 

1 Cyrus Pierce was born at Waltham, Massachusetts, 1790, gradu- 
ated from Harvard College in 1810, died 1859. He was bred to the 
ministry, but followed teaching as a life-work. He taught fifty 
years — eight years as a teacher of teachers. See a careful memoir 
by Rev. S. J. May; Barnard, The American Journal of Education, 
Vol. IV., pp. 275-308, The establishment of the Normal schools is 
discussed in The Common School Journal, Vol. I., pp. 33-38. There 
the full course of study will be found. 



154 HORACE MANN 

quarter closed with, only twelve pupils, and the num- 
ber was never more than thirty-one for the first three 
years of the school's history. At the close of the first 
quarter the principal wrote in his journal, that the 
number of scholars had been fewer than he antici- 
pated, but most of those who had attended had made 
a good beginning. A model school was established 
the second term. The other schools began with a 
larger attendance than Lexington ; but all were small 
and grew slowly, at least, according to our present 
standard of measurement. At first the principal of 
the school was the only teacher. Still, the man who 
has a firm hold of cause and effect would hardly call 
that the day of small things. 

The responsibility that rested upon Cyrus Pierce dur- 
ing the few years that he was at the head of the first 
Massachusetts Normal school was very great. It is not 
at all likely that he felt its full weight. It was, above 
all, important that the school should commend itself 
to the public favor from the very beginning. He, 
indeed, could not have wrecked the school and the 
cause at once, but another man in the same place 
could easily have done so. Dr. Barnard put on record 
the opinion, that had it not been for Cyrus Pierce the 
cause of Normal schools would have failed or have 
been postponed for an indefinite period. 

After three years of service, Mr. Pierce retired for 
a time, because his excessive labors had broken down 
his health. The cause was also fortunate in his suc- 
cessor for the interval, the Rev. Samuel J. May. Mr. 
May's spirit is well illustrated in a bit of history that 
he himself relates of an occurrence at a convention of 



THE MASSACHUSETTS NORMAL SCHOOLS 155 

teachers held in Essex County^ Massachusetts, where 
he made an address on the management of schools, 
using as a motto the words, " Love the unlovely, and 
they will put their unloveliness away." " Several 
persons arose in quick succession, and declared this 
to be the most important suggestion they had yet 
received. Father G. said, mirahile clictu, that this was 
entirely new to him 5 that he had never before heard 
this method proposed ; that he felt deeply that there 
was a great truth in it; and that he would go home 
and try to act in accordance with it. So said several 
others, and ' love the unlovely ^ was heard from vari- 
ous quarters as we were going out of the house along 
the road and after we had reached the hotel. I was 
really a little disconcerted to find that it was a new 
discovery to so many, that evil might be overcome 
with good in schools no less than elsewhere." ^ 

To the pedagogist the toi^ic that has been reserved 
for the last is the most interesting of all — the studies 
of the Normal schools. The norm was now to be 
established. What should it be ? A review and an 
extension of the common branches ? The principles 
and methods of teaching and of school organization 
and government ? The union of the two elements of 
study just mentioned? A narrow course or a broad 
one ? Unfortunately, we have few transcripts of the 
thoughts of the men Avho met and answered these ques- 
tions ; but we know perfectly well Avhat their answer 
was. That the influence of the Normal schools " might 
be wholly concentrated upon the preparation of teach- 
ers for our common schools," said Mr. Mann in one 
1 Life of Samuel J. May, pp. 181, 182. 



156 HORACE MANN 

of his annual addresses, "the ahnost doubtful provi- 
sion that the learned languages should not be included 
in the list of studies taught therein was inserted in 
the regulations for their government; not because 
there was any hostility or indifference towards those 
languages, but because it is desirable to prepare teach- 
ers for our common schools rather than to furnish 
facilities for those who are striving to become teach- 
ers of select schools, high schools, and academies." 
Governor Everett, in his address on Normal schools, 
delivered at the opening of the school at Barre, Sep- 
tember 5, 1839, speaking for the Board of Education, 
of which he was ex officio president, explained the plan 
adopted more fully. There were no funds applicable, 
he said, to the expense of an extensive establishment ; 
" and our young men and women could not generally 
afford the time requisite for a very long course of 
preparation, because the majority of our districts do 
not require, and would not support, teachers who, 
having been at great expense of time and money in 
fitting themselves for their calling, would need a pro- 
portionate compensation. We suppose that many of 
those who resort to these institutions will, at present, 
be able only to pass but a part of one year in the 
enjoyment of their advantages ; but while provision 
is made for the shortest period for which any indi- 
vidual could reasonably wish to be received, a thorough 
course of instruction will also be arranged for those 
who desire to devote a longer time to their preparation 
as teachers.'^ The governor proceeded to sketch out 
the course of instruction that had been agreed u]3on. 
Only his leading propositions need to be quoted. 



THE MASSACHUSETTS NORMAL SCHOOLS 157 

(1) " A careful review of the brandies of knowledge 
required to be taught in our common schools, it being, 
of course, the first requisite of a teacher that he should 
himself know well that which he is to aid others in 
learning." "The teacher must know things in a mas- 
terly way, curiously, nicely, and in their reasons." 
(2) "The second part of instruction in a Normal school 
is the art of teaching. To know the matter to be 
taught, and to know it thoroughly, are of themselves, 
though essential, not all that is required. There is a 
peculiar art of teaching. The details of this branch 
are inexhaustible, but it is hoped that the most impor- 
tant principles may be brought within such a compass 
as to afford material benefit to those who pass even 
the shortest time at these institutions." (3) "The 
third branch of instruction to be imparted in an in- 
stitution concerns the important subject of the govern- 
ment of the school, and might perhaps more justly 
have been named the first. The best method of gov- 
erning a school — that is, of exercising such a moral 
influence in it as is most favorable to the improvement 
of the pupil — will form a very important part of the 
course of instruction designed to qualify teachers for 
their calling." (4) "In the last place, it is to be 
observed, that in aid of all the instruction and exer- 
cises within the limits of the Normal school properly 
so called, there is to be established a common or dis- 
trict school as a school of practice, in which, under 
the direction of the principal of the school, the young 
teacher may have the benefit of actual exercise in the 
business of instruction." 

The governor added: "Among the fundamental 



158 HORACE MANN 

principles laid clown by the Board of Education for 
the government of the Normal schools, it has been 
provided that a portion of Scripture shall be daily 
read ; and it is their devout hope that a fervent spirit 
of prayer, pervading the hearts of both principal and 
pupils, may draw down the divine blessing on their 
pursuits." ^ 

With a single exception this programme is the pro- 
gramme to which our Normal schools conform to-day. 
No mention is made of the history of education. 
Nothing is said indeed of the science of teaching, 
but Governor Everett means . by the term " art," as 
here used, theory as well as practice. The plan 
agrees in essential features with the one that experi- 
ence had already sanctioned in Prussia; but it is im- 
possible to say how far it was shaped by a knowledge 
of this fact. Mr. Brooks, no doubt, had caused the 
plan of the Prussian Normal schools to be well under- 
stood by many persons in Massachusetts before the 
year 1839. Again, the plan was in perfect conformity 
with the dictates of practical wisdom under existing 
conditions. It was also in accord with the lessons of 
theory. The pupil's method of attacking a lesson or 
subject differs materially from the teacher's method 
of attack. The terms '^academical" and "profes- 
sional" suggest to our minds two very different 
points of view. The Normal school should not con- 
cern itself with the rudiments of the subjects taught 
in common schools ; it is their business, as a distin- 
guished thinker has said, to lead the student " to re- 

1 Orations and Speeches on Various Occasions. Boston, 1870^ 
Vol. II., pp. 335-362. 



THE MASSACHUSETTS NOEMAL SCHOOLS 159 

examine all liis elementary branches in their relations 
to all human learning." "The Normal school/' he 
continues, "therefore took up just this work at the 
beginning, and performed it well. It induced in the 
young men and women, preparing for the work of 
teaching, the habit of taking up the lower branches 
in their relations to the higher — taking them up 
constructively, as it were. For to study arithmetic 
in the light of algebra and geometry is to study it 
constructively. Its rules are derived from algebraic 
formulae, and are to be demonstrated by algebraic 
processes. So the details of geography have their 
explanation in the formative processes of land and 
water as treated in physical geography and the sci- 
ences of which it is a compend. Of course this de- 
mands a high standard of preparation in those who 
enter the Normal school. The higher the better, for 
they should be able to review the lower branches in 
the light of all human learning.''^ The ideal here 
set up is a high one; but the principle is correctly 
stated. Indeed, the nature of a successful Normal 
school is determined by the work that it has to do. 
The most important question that the logic of the 
school does not answer is that of the relative meas- 
ure of concrete and abstract teaching in its class and 
lecture rooms. The amplitude of the curriculum is a 
secondary question. 

To assign or distribute the credit for establishing 
the norm fixed upon in 1839, would be a fruitless 
endeavor. When it appeared it had the sanction of 

1 Dr. W. T. Harris. See his oration delivered at Framingham, 
Massachusetts, July 2, 1889. 



160 HORACE MANN 

the Massachusetts Board of Education, and was prob- 
ably the combined work of many minds. How far 
Mr. Pierce contributed to its formulation, we have no 
means of telling. He certainly was the first to give 
it practical effect, for he exemplified it in his own 
teaching. Once introduced, this norm tended to 
become a tradition running to the halls of every 
Normal school founded in the land ; but this is quite 
as much due to the nature of the case, or the logic 
of the situation, as it was to the fact that this pattern 
had been shown in Lexington with the approval of 
Horace Mann. 

It was Mr. Mann's habit to present every educa- 
tional interest of the State as though, for the time, 
he thought it the great interest. Still it is not diffi- 
cult to see that the Normal schools, after all, were 
the apple of his eye. He said at Bridgewater, in 
1846, that the young ladies who attended that school 
were the only human beings whom he envied. The 
chapter may well close with this confession of faith, 
quoted from the same address : 

*^ I believe Normal schools to be a new instrumen- 
tality in the advancement of the race. I believe that 
without them free schools themselves would be shorn 
of their strength and their healing power, and would 
at length become mere charity schools, and thus die 
out in fact and in form. Neither the art of printing, 
nor the trial by jury, nor a free press, nor free suf- 
frage, can long exist to any beneficial and salutary 
purpose without schools for the training of teachers : 
for if the character and qualifications of teachers be 
allowed to degenerate, the free schools will become 



THE MASSACHUSETTS NORMAL SCHOOLS 161 

pauper schoolSj and the pauper schools will produce 
pauper souls, and the free press will become a false 
and licentious press, and ignorant voters will become 
venal voters, and through the medium and guise of 
republican forms an oligarchy of profligate and flagi- 
tious men will govern the land; nay, the universal 
diffusion and ultimate triumph of all-glorious Christi- 
anity itself must await the time when knowledge shall 
be diffused among men through the instrumentality of 
good schools. Coiled up in this institution, as in a 
spring, there is a vigor whose uncoiling may wheel 
the spheres." 



CHAPTER VII 

THE REPORTS TO THE BOARD OF EDUCATION 

Mr. Mann's services were so great in several dif- 
ferent departments of Ms work that it would be dif- 
ficult to say of any one of them, "In this he was 
greatest of all." But among his_ numerous educational 
writings we cannot hesitate to select his annual Re- 
ports as the most valuable and lasting. They are 
twelve in number, one for every year that he held the 
of&ce. They were made nominally to the State Board of 
Education, but really to the people of Massachusetts 
and of the country at large. They were widely pub- 
lished, in whole or in part, and still more widely read. 
Mr. George B. Emerson said of the great truths that 
the Eeports contained : " They have already reached 
far beyond the limits of our narrow State. They are 
echoing in the woods of Maine and along the St. Law- 
rence and the Lakes. They are heard throughout 
New York and throughout all the West and the South- 
west. A conviction of their importance has sent a 
Massachusetts man to take charge of the schools of 
New Orleans : they are at this moment regenerating 
those of Ehode Island. In the remotest corner of 
Ohio forty men, not children and women, but men 
meet together to read aloud a single copy of the Sec- 
retary's Eeports which one of them receives; thou- 

162 



EEPORTS TO THE BOARD OF EDUCATION 163 

sands of the best friends of humanity of all sects, 
parties, and creeds in every State of the Union are 
familiar with the name of Horace Mann," ^ etc. 

The general character of the Eeports was determined 
by the law creating the Board of Education, which 
has been summarized in a previous chapter. They 
were devoted partly to reporting the existing state of 
things, including the progress that was made from 
year to year, but especially to the discussion of present 
and coming questions with a view to creating public 
opinion and guiding public action. Since they were 
written many hundreds of similar reports have been 
made, most of which are now found only in libraries 
and in lumber rooms ; but these have a perennial life. 
This is due especially to the great ability with which 
Mr. Mann treated his subjects, but partly to his fortu- 
nate position in the great column of common school 
reform. He dealt with the fundamental questions of 
this reform before they had lost any of the interest 
that grows out of novelty. He was a pioneer, and 
his work was the more interesting because a part of it 
consisted in creating interest. 

It is proposed in this chapter to pass Mr. Mann's 
Eeports in review, and when it is said that together 
they fill a thousand pages of the authorized edition 
of his Life and WorTis, the reason is given why the 
review must necessarily be a very hasty and imperfect 
one, comprising little more than a table of contents.^ 

1 Ohsei^vations on " Remarks on the Seventh Annual Report of 
the Hon. Horace Mann." Boston, 1844, p. 15. 

2 It should be said that, in their original form as published in 
the Annual Reports of the Board of Education and The Coimnon 
School Journal, the Reports are considerably more voluminous than 



164 HORACE MANN 

The First Report, 1837, written when he had been 
but five months in office, gives an account of the work 
that the Secretary has entered upon and describes the 
general condition of the schools in the State. He dis- 
closes the defects of the system as it exists, but avows 
the belief that the excellencies vastly preponderate 
over the defects. His discussion is limited to four 
principal topics. The first one, Schoolhouses, he dis- 
misses with few words, because he promises a spe- 
cial report on that subject. Secondly, he finds that 
the character of the school committees and the man- 
ner in which they discharge their duties are open to 
criticism. The law in regard to the examination of 
teachers and the visitation of schools is very gen- 
erally disregarded. The multiplicity and diversity of 
books in the schools is a great evil. Of the children 
who are wholly dependent upon the common schools 
for instruction, one-third absent themselves from school 
in the winter and two-fifths in the summer. The 
average length of the school year is six months and 
twenty-five days. Thirdly, the apathy of the people 
themselves to common schools produces serious evils. 
"It cannot be overlooked," he says, "that the ten- 
dency of the private school system is to assimilate our 
modes of education to those of England, where Church- 
men and Dissenters, each sect according to its own 
creed, maintain separate schools in which children are 
taught from their tenderest years to wield the sword 



when reproduced in The Life and Works of Horace Manri. Much 
of the most valuable matter for the purposes of the historian, as 
many statistics, is omitted by the editor as not having present 
interest. 



REPORTS TO THE BOARD OF EDUCATION 165 

of polemics with, fatal dexterity; and where the Gospel, 
instead of being a temple of peace, is converted into 
an armory of deadly weapons for social, interminable 
warfare." The rich and populous towns raise less 
money for common schools proportionately than the 
State as a whole. Fourthly, the teachers are as good 
as public opinion demands. The average wages of 
men teachers, including board, is $25.44 a month, 
and of women teachers $11.38. Outside of Boston 
there are but two hundred teachers in the common 
schools of the State who follow teaching regularly. 
Moral instruction is much neglected. Often no regis- 
ters are kept in the schools, and illustrative apparatus 
is very small in quantity and poor in quality. The 
Supplementary Report on Schoolhouses, which soon 
followed, deals with that subject in a very comprehen- 
sive and intelligent manner. Mr. Mann anticipates in 
part ideas that are only now becoming generally current 
with regard to the concentration of pupils in country 
schools. The two documents together occupy one 
hundred and five pages, and are a valuable source of 
materials for the student of contemporary educational 
history. 

The Second Eeport, 1838, first touches the condition 
of the schools. Here occurs the statement, ^^ That the 
common school system of Massachusetts had fallen 
into a state of general unsoundness and debility," 
which gave some persons much offence. Some evi- 
dences of progress in various parts of the State are 
presented, and especially the arrangements that had 
been made in various counties and towns for courses 
of lectures dealing with teaching and other educa- 



166 HORACE MANN 

tional subjects. A law for the compensation of school 
committeemen has been passed, and registers have 
been introduced into most of the schools that had 
lacked them. However, the great subject of the 
Keport is Methods of Teaching Spelling, Reading, 
and Composition. The a-b-c method of teaching 
reading is condemned, and the word method is rec- 
ommended. Great stress is laid upon the mental ele- 
ment in reading in contradistinction to the purely 
mechanical element. The evils attending the use of 
the "extract" school readers are exposed, and valuable 
suggestions looking to something better are offered. 
Whole pages could be cut from this Report that are 
fully abreast of the best thought of to-day. There 
is a clear perception throughout of the place that use 
and wont hold in teaching the language-arts. The 
Report fills sixty-eight pages. 

In the Third Report, 1839, Mr. Mann felicitates 
the Board upon the progress of the good cause, and 
emphasizes the fact that all improvements in the 
school system depend upon the people and school 
ofBlcers. He shows his humanitarian interest by 
remarking upon some efforts that have been made to 
reach, with the benefits of education, the children of 
persons employed upon the public works, and by 
drawing attention, as he had done once before, to 
the recently enacted law to protect, educationally 
speaking, children under the age of fifteen years 
employed in manufacturing establishments. Some 
remarks upon Massachusetts as a manufacturing State 
show that Mr. Mann had thoroughly grasped the 
influence of changing social elements upon public 



KEPORTS TO THE BOARD OF EDUCATION 167 

education. He then takes up the most important 
subject that he has investigated during the year, that 
of libraries ; but this subject is considered in a pre- 
vious chapter and need not here detain us. A refer- 
ence to Dr. Thomas Dick suggests the reflection that 
Mr. Mann had much in common with that philosopher 
and writer. His remark that if when scholars came 
to the name of Socrates, Luther, or Howard, they 
could turn to a biographical dictionary, etc., it would 
give a sense of reality to the business of the school 
and acquaint them with important facts, shows that 
he had thought of the relation which should exist 
between the library and the school. He did not, 
however, at all grasp our modern conception of teach- 
ing literature in the schools. This Eeport contains 
fifty-two pages. 

The Fourth Eeport, 1840, portrays the evils, and 
particularly the physical evils, attending the multipli- 
cation of districts and the bringing of all grades of 
pupils together in the same schoolroom. A section of 
a road a mile and a half in length on which he had 
counted six such schoolhouses, furnishes him his text. 
A remedy is sought "in the establishment of Union 
schools wherever the combined circumstances of terri- 
tory and population will allow ; consolidation of two 
or more districts into one, where the Union system is 
impracticable ; and, when the population is so sparse 
as to prevent either of these courses, then to break in 
upon the routine of the school, either by confining the 
young children for a less number of hours, or by giv- 
ing them two recesses each half day." " The Union 
school is found to improve all the schools in the con- 



168 HORACE MANN 

stitueiit districts." For tlie rest, the Secretary con- 
siders the qualifications of teachers, constant and 
punctual attendance of pupils, the manifestation of 
parental interest in the schools, and the number and 
combination of pupils necessary to make a good school. 
To M. Victor Cousin's aphorism, " As is the teacher, 
so is the school," he proposes the addition, " As is the 
parent, so are both teacher and school." The general 
introduction of registers into the schoolhouses had 
revealed an unexpected amount of absenteeism and 
irregularity of attendance. The Eeport fills tv/enty- 
nine pages. 

The Fifth Eeport, 1841, thirty-five pages, enters a 
new field. It is addressed, Mr. Mann says in one of 
his letters, to the faculty of acquisitiveness, or, as he 
says in the Eeport, he " shows the effect of education 
upon the worldly fortunes and estates of men — its 
influence upon property, upon human comfort and com- 
petence, upon the outward, visible, material interest or 
well-being of individuals and communities." This he 
holds to be the lowest view that can be taken of the 
benevolent influences of education ; yet he had under- 
taken an investigation of the subject for the purpose 
of placing the truth upon a firm foundation, and so of 
gaining a point of advantage for making an appeal in 
behalf of education to those members of the com- 
munity who were beyond the reach of a higher class 
of arguments. He reaches the conclusion to which 
all such inquiries have led, no matter where they have 
been made, that education is a great economical and 
moral factor in society. The replies that a number 
of competent business men had made to his circular 



REPORTS TO THE BOARD OE EDUCATION 169 

of inquiries add value to the Report. There is, how- 
ever, one element in all such reasoning that escapes 
measurement, if not detection. The educated persons 
who figure in the tests, as a class, are superior in many 
other respects to the uninstructed who figure in the 
same tests, in natural ability, character, mode of 
living, and social surroundings. It is true that these 
other points of difference depend partly upon educa- 
tion ; so the study is an excellent example of plurality 
of causes and of mutuality of cause and effect. Still, 
high as is his estimate of knowledge and teaching, 
Mr. Mann knows that they are not directly converti- 
ble into virtue and character. In a previous Eeport 
he says it had been ascertained, after an examination 
of great extent and minuteness, that in France most 
crimes were perpetrated in those provinces where 
most of the inhabitants could read and write ; " their 
morals had been neglected, and the cultivated intel- 
lect presented to the uncultivated feeling not only a 
larger circle of temptations, but better instruments for 
their gratification." 

The Sixth Eeport, 1842, containing one hundred 
and one pages, is just what the editor of TJie Life and 
Works calls it, a Dissertation on the Study of Physi- 
ology in the Schools. This is one of Mr. Mann's great 
themes. The Eeport furnishes a good example of his 
habit of seeking mental discipline and culture in prac- 
tical utility. He presents statistics, showing the num- 
ber of pupils in the schools pursuing studies above the 
elementary level, ranging from Greek to the history 
of the United States. He raises the very pertinent 
question whether the numerical order in which the 



170 HORACE MANN 

studies stand in tlie table corresponds to the natural 
order. The bent of his own mind, as well as interesting 
facts, are presented in the questions : " Can any satis- 
factory ground be assigned why algebra, a branch which 
not one man in a thousand ever has occasion to use in 
the business of life, should be studied by more than 
twenty-three hundred pupils, and bookkeeping, which 
every man, even the day laborer, should understand, 
should be attended to by only a little more than half 
that number ? Among farmers and road-makers, why 
should geometry take precedence of surveying; and 
among seekers after intellectual and moral truth, why 
should rhetoric have double the followers of logic?" 
His thesis is that physiology should have priority 
among the studies that lie above the elementary 
level. He is not content simply to maintain this 
thesis, but writes what is little less than a practical 
treatise upon the applications of physiology. Such a 
sentence as this reminds one of Herbert Spencer's 
celebrated essay written years afterward : " Graduates 
of colleges and of theological seminaries, who would 
be ashamed if they did not know that Alexander's 
horse was named Bucephalus, or had not read Mid- 
dleton's octavo volume upon the Greek article, are 
often profoundly ignorant of the great laws which 
God has impressed upon their physical frame, and 
which, under penalty of forfeiting life and usefulness, 
He has commanded them to know and obey." 

The Seventh Keport, 1843. This occupies one hun- 
dred and eighty-eight pages of The Life and Works of 
Horace Mann. After devoting a few pages to Massa- 
chusetts, the Secretary passes at once to his European 



REPORTS TO THE BOARD OF EDUCATION 171 

tour. His itinerary was England, Ireland, and Scot- 
land; Hamburg and Magdeburg; Berlin, Potsdam, 
Halle, and Weissenfels ; Leipsic and Dresden ; Erfurt, 
Weimar, and Eisenach; Erankfort, Nassau, Hesse- 
Darmstadt, and Baden; tlie Ehenish. Provinces of 
Prussia; Holland, Belgium, and Paris. His progress 
was rapid, but lie compressed a great amount of ob- 
servation into the time at his disposal. As a rule, 
what pleased him most was what he saw in Germany. 
Describing his work here, he said : " Perhaps I saw 
as fair a proportion of the Prussian and Saxon schools 
as one Avould see of the schools in Massachusetts who 
should visit those of Boston, Newburyport, l^ew Bed- 
ford, Worcester, Northampton, and Springfield." He 
gave close attention in visiting the schools to studies, 
discipline, methods of teaching, teachers, and the prep- 
aration of teachers. 

-Eead a half century after it was written, the 
Seventh Keport impresses the reader as being the 
work of an open-minded man, who is making a hur- 
ried examination of educational institutions that were 
before known to him only at second hand. The mat- 
ter is copious ; facts and ideas fairly crowd the pages. 
The logical arrangement is imperfect, the style is 
sometimes incorrect, but is always animated and often 
fervid. The writer is evidently intensely anxious to 
discover and report the exact truth. He wants to 
show his countrymen the schools just as he sees them. 
He has no prejudice against things that are foreign. 
"A generous and impartial mind," he says, "does not 
ask whence the thing comes, but Avhat it is." The 
writer not only has a first-hand interest in the sub- 



172 HORACE MANN 

ject, but is also conscious that lie is writing things 
new and strange to his audience. We must not, 
therefore, apply our common standards of judgment, 
and call much of the matter old and commonplace, 
but rather recreate the educational condition of the 
country at the time when the Keport was written, and 
study its adaptation to the existing state of affairs. 
We are so familiar now with the word method of 
teaching reading, oral instruction, real instruction, 
elementary science in elementary schools, teaching 
that flows from the full mind of the teacher rather 
than from the pages of a book, object lessons, lan- 
guage exercises, geography built upon the basis of 
the child's environment, music and drawing, and 
teaching arithmetic by analysis rather than by rule 
— we are so familiar with these things that we may 
wonder at Mr. Mann's enthusiasm over them ; but 
we must remember that a half century has wrought 
great changes in American schools, changes that in 
some measure have grown out of the very document 
that we are reading. The Eeport is interesting be- 
cause it points out to us the origin and source of 
some of the most familiar features of our best schools. 
More than this, there are still thousands of schools 
where the " German methods," if introduced, would 
be quite as novel as they were in Massachusetts fifty 
years ago. 

He finds abundant confirmation of some of his 
favorite ideas. He is never more interested than 
when describing the oral instruction, the enthusiasm 
and kindness of teachers, the absence of corporal 
punishment, and the discredit cast upon emulation, 



KEPOKTS TO THE BOAKD OF EDUCATION 173 

that he saw in the schools of Germany. When deal- 
ing with the Normal schools, and the preparation and 
character of teachers in the same country, his admi- 
ration becomes unbounded. England gives him a new 
opportunity to present an old idea. The lack of a 
national system of education, in which the whole 
people participated, he declares to be full of admoni- 
tion to the people of Massachusetts, for it was the 
state of things towards which they themselves, only 
eight years before, had been rapidly tending. In re- 
spect to the comparative merits of education at home 
and abroad, these two short paragraphs strike the 
keynote of the Eeport : 

"On the one hand, I am certain that the evils to 
which our own system is exposed, or under which it 
now labors, exist in some foreign countries in a far 
more aggravated degree than among ourselves; and 
if we are wise enough to learn from the experience of 
others, rather than await the infliction consequent 
upon our own errors, we may yet escape the magni- 
tude and formidableness of those calamities under 
which some other communities are now suffering. 

" On the other hand, I do not hesitate to say that 
there are many things abroad which we at home would 
do well to imitate ; things some of which are here as 
yet mere matters of speculation and theory, but which 
there have long been in operation, and are now pro- 
ducing a harvest of rich and abundant blessings." 

Mr. Mann did not confine his studies to schools, in 
the accepted sense of that term. Some of his most in- 
teresting pages relate to such topics as Prisons, Ee- 
f ormatory Institutions, Asylums, Hospitals, and Schools 



174 HORACE MANN 

for the Defective Classes. On these points he was 
quite as well qualified to pass judgment as he was on 
methods of primary teaching. His habit of making 
moral "improvements" never for a moment forsook 
him. Nothing that he saw in the German schools 
offended him more than the manner in which they 
were made to support the State religious establish- 
ments. Mr. Mann was never happier than when, be- 
fore an audience or at a writing table, he set himself 
to deal with some great human question, — a question 
that involved politics, education, morality, and re- 
ligion ; and in the impressive review of the Old and 
New Worlds, with which the Seventh Eeport closes, 
he is seen at his best. 

The Seventh Eeport was not so much an important 
contribution to pedagogical science or criticism as an 
important contribution to pedagogical dynamics. It 
was so in more ways than one. It moved the schools 
of Massachusetts, and also of the country, while it 
brought on a controversy with the Boston schoolmas- 
ters that had much to do with fixing Horace Mann's 
place in the educational firmament. 

The Eighth Eeport, 1844, first congratulates the 
Board of Education upon the growing excellence of 
the reports that are received from the local school 
committees. These reports exhibit abundant evidence 
that the prevailing views of what the common schools 
should be are far in advance of what the schools 
actually are. He finds much pleasure in the fact 
" that more and more of the children of the Common- 
wealth are educated in a purely republican manner — 
educated together under the same roof, on the same 



REPORTS TO THE BOARD OF EDUCATION 175 

seats, with, the same encouragement, rewards, punish- 
ments, and to the exclusion of adventitious and arti- 
ficial distinctions." Much, to his satisfaction, too, th.e 
number of women teachers, both, relatively and abso- 
lutely, is rapidly increasing. He sees in this fact 
the improvement of the schools and the elevation of 
women's estate in society. He comments upon teach- 
ers' institutes, the use of tbe Bible in schools, and 
vocal music. In connection with the legal power of 
towns to raise money for school purposes, he offers 
some remarks on the value of certain of the higher 
studies. He closes with one of his frequent eulogies 
upon education as contributing to the amelioration 
of the race. The E-eport contains fifty-eight pages. 
The Ninth Report, 1845, one hundred and five pages, 
is one of the most interesting and valuable of the whole 
series. The writer begins with remarking upon the 
manner in which school moneys are apportioned among 
the districts, and lays down the sound principle of 
" equality of school privileges for all the children of 
the town, whether they belong to a poor district or a 
rich one, a large district or a small one." He com- 
ments upon the rapid growth of common schools in 
different parts of the country, commending especially 
the enterprise of New York. The great theme of the 
Report, however, is School Motives and Some Means 
for avoiding and extirpating School Vices. The elabo- 
rate discussion of this topic embraces, for the most 
part, matter that is oftener found in professional 
books than in State Reports. It reminds the reader 
of the old-fashioned treatise on the Theory and Prac- 
tice of Teaching. The same may be said of other por- 



176 HORACE MANN 

tions of the Eeports ; reprinted in appropriate form, 
mucli of the matter would form useful manuals for 
the teacher's table. The observation that the idea of 
an offence is not unfrequently suggested by its pro- 
hibition, and that the law sometimes leads to its own 
infraction, is illustrated by the story of a priest and a 
hostler. At the close of his customary questions in 
the confessional, the i)i'iest one day asked the hostler 
if he had ever greased the teeth of his customers' 
horses to prevent them from eating their oats. The 
man replied that he never had, and had never heard 
of such a thing ; but the next time he was confessed, 
the first offence that he had to mention was that of 
greasing the teeth of his customers' horses. The 
E,eport closes with an exposition of the Pestalozzian 
or inductive method of teaching. 

The Tenth Ee^^ort, 1846, thirty-six pages, first deals 
with the history and development of the Massachu- 
setts public school system. Mr. Mann then raises the 
question as to the ground upon which this system 
rests. He sees clearly that the foundation upon 
which it was placed by the Puritan Fathers in 1647 
was much too narrow, because not all of the people 
of the Commonwealth are Protestant in religion. 
American independence brought forward a new argu- 
ment — the relation of popular education to republican 
government; but to a monarchist this would be a 
reason for destroying free schools and not for foster- 
ing them. Accordingly, a broader ground must be 
sought. He mentions the economical argument and 
the ethical one, and says the general failure, the world 
over, to support free schools must be found in false 



KEPOKTS TO THE BOARD OF EDUCATION 177 

ideas respecting the right to property more than any- 
where else. After some pages of analysis, he pro- 
pounds the three following propositions, as describing 
the broad and ever-enduring foundation that must 
underlie a strong and permanent system of com- 
mon schools : (1) " The successive generations of 
men taken collectively constitute one great common- 
wealth." (2) " The property of this commonwealth 
is pledged for the education of all its youth up to 
such a point as will save them from poverty and vice, 
and prej)are them for the adequate performance of 
their social and civil duties." (3) "The successive 
holders of this property are trustees bound to the 
faithful execution of their trust by the most sacred 
obligations, and embezzlement and pillage from chil- 
dren and descendants have not less of criminality, and 
have more of meanness, than the same offences when 
perpetrated against contemporaries." 

In this Eeport, as originally published, Mr. Mann 
condemns the practice of dividing towns into school 
districts, which sprang up in the last century. He 
considers the law of 1789, which authorized towns 
so to divide themselves, the most unfortunate law on 
the subject of common schools ever enacted in the 
State. He relates that already several towns have 
abolished their districts and assumed the adminis- 
tration of their schools in their corporate capacity, 
which was the beginning of a movement in the direc- 
tion of concentrating school authority that is now 
assuming large proportions.-^ 

1 After Mr. Mann had left the ofifice, the State published, under 
his editorship, by the express authority of the legislature, the fol- 



178 HORACE MANN 

The Eleventh Eeport, 1847, eighty-one pages, is 
almost wholly given up to another of Secretary 
Mann's special investigations. He sent out a circular 
to practical educators, chosen for their experience and 
soundness of judgment, inquiring what, in their opin- 
ion, would be the efficiency, in the promotion of social 
and moral character, of a good common school educa- 
tion conducted on the cardinal principles of the New 
England system.^ The valuable replies of these ex- 
perts fill several pages, and constitute the texts of a 
still more valuable discussion by the Secretary. It is 
needless, perhaps, to remark that the whole Eeport 
breathes the ardent faith in the remedial power of 
good common schools that characterized the ardent 
reformers of a half century ago. Referring to the 
educational activity of the time, Mr. Mann signifi- 
cantly says there could be no hazard in affirming that 
far more had been spoken and printed, heard and read, 
on this theme within the last twelve years than ever 
before were it all put together, since the beginning 
of the Colonies. 

The Twelfth Report, 1848, is in some respects the 
magnum opus, filling one hundred and eighteen pages 
of The Life and Works. Mr. Mann, as Secretary, now 
takes leave of the Board of Education, the public, and 
the cause of common schools. He naturally becomes 

lowing work : The Massachusetts System of Common Schools, being 
an Eyilarged and Revised Edition of the Tenth Annual Report of 
the First Secretary of the Massachusetts Board of Education. 
Boston, 1849. 

1 These experts were John Griscom, D. P. Page, Solomon Adams, 
Jacob Abbott, F. A. Adams, E. A. Andrews, Roger S. Howard, 
Catharine E. Beecher. 



REPOETS TO THE BOARD OF EDUCATION 179 

discursive and comprehensive in his last message. 
His great theme, he thus announces : " Tlie Capacities 
of our Present School System to Improve the Pecu- 
niary Condition and to Elevate the Intellectual and 
Moral Character of the Commonwealth." To a great 
extent it is a resume of matter that he had before- 
presented. As submitted to the Board, the Eeport 
contained some statistics that make a modest show- 
ing of certain aspects of progress that the schools 
had made since 1837. 

Mr. Mann says in his final Report that when he 
first assumed the duties of the Secretaryship two 
courses lay open before him. One was, to treat the 
school system of the State as though it were perfect ; 
to praise teachers for a skill they had had no chance 
of acquiring and did not possess ; to applaud towns 
for the munificence they had not shown ; in a word, 
to lull with flattery a community that was already 
sleeping. The other course was to advocate an ener- 
getic and comprehensive system of education ; to seek 
for improvements both at home and abroad ; to expose 
justly but kindly the incompetence of teachers ; to 
inform and stimulate school committees in respect 
to their duty ; to call for money adequate to the work 
to be done. He said the one cause would for a time 
have been ignobly popular ; the other was imminently 
perilous. Horace Mann saw all this, but he did not 
hesitate. Duty left him no option ; the only way to 
end prosperously was to begin righteously. The story 
of his experience is disheartening in parts ; but, taken 
together, it is a mighty stimulant to all teachers and 
school ofiicers to do their duty. Moreover, teachers 



180 HORACE MANN 

and school officers should not miss the spirit in which 
he did his work. " The education of the whole people 
in a republican government/' he said, '' can never be 
attained without the consent of the whole people. 
Compulsion, even if it were desirable, is not an avail- 
able instrument. Enlightenment, not coercion, is our 
resource. The nature of education must be explained. 
The whole mass of mind must be instructed in regard 
to its comprehension and enduring interests. We can- 
not drive our people up a dark avenue, even though it 
be the right one ; but we must hang the starry lights 
of knowledge about it, and show them not only the 
directness of its course to the goal of prosperity and 
honor, but the beauty of the way that leads to it." 

These resumes reveal in part what the Eeports them- 
selves reveal in full — the nature, the range, and the 
limitations of Horace Mann's educational genius. 
They present him to the world as an educational 
statesman rather than a philosophical educator or a 
trained pedagogist. The Reports are among the best 
existing expositions, if, indeed, they are not the very 
best ones, of the practical benefits of a common school 
education both to the individual and the State. The 
student or educator, the journalist or politician, who 
is seeking the best arguments in favor of popular 
education, will find them here. 



CHAPTER VIII 

THE CONTROVERSY WITH BOSTON SCHOOLMASTERS 

The judicious reader at the present day reads Mr. 
Mann's celebrated controversy with, the Boston school- 
masters, or their controversy with him, with mingled 
feelings of satisfaction and pain. It throws much 
light upon the state of education in Massachusetts 
and Boston, and particularly upon the teaching pro- 
fession at the time of the Common School Eevival. It 
presents studies of character. Again, it has a con- 
siderable interest merely as a piece of controversy. 
But when all is said, these feelings are shrouded 
with regret, to use a mild word, that the great reform 
should have been marred by an uncalled-for onslaught 
upon the foremost reformer by prominent men in the 
teaching profession. The story must be told once 
more, because it is a part of the history, and particu- 
larly because, in the end, it promoted the reform. But 
first let us see why, as has been stated in a previous 
chapter, the controversy lay in the nature of things 
and was in fact unavoidable. 

Schools are a conservative engine, and teaching is a 
conservative profession. The causes of these facts lie 
deep in the very nature of the work to be done. Much 
of the work of the elementary school is to put the pupil 
into proper relations with the civilization about him. 

181 



182 HORACE MANN 

Teaching is also a self-conscious profession, rendering 
its votaries keenly alive to criticism, and, some would 
say, not conducive to the development of proper sense 
of proportion and perspective. In 1843 Massachu- 
setts, as she reflected upon her Puritan-descended 
system of public schools, was filled with complacency. 
Teachers shared in the opposition that the creation 
of the Board of Education had provoked, some of 
them moved by their religious feelings, but more, 
probably, by professional bias. Had not the schools 
gotten on very well without such a Board for two 
hundred years ? The setting aside of Mr. Carter for 
Mr. Mann in 1837 still rankled in some bosoms. The 
one was a teacher, the other a lawyer and politician ; 
and some teachers, no doubt, looked upon Mr. Mann's 
presence in the chief educational office of the State 
much as a pious Jew would have regarded the pres- 
ence of a G-entile in the palace of the High Priest 
at Jerusalem. What could a man not bred to the 
trade teach the teachers of Boston? Then Mr. Mann, 
looking at his subject broadly and setting forth his 
ideas in an oratorical mode, gave quick offence to some 
minds. His winged words stuck in the wounds that 
they had made. Such phrases as " incompetent teach- 
ers," "ignorance of teachers," "depressed state of com- 
mon schools," " sleepy supervision," deficiencies of 
teachers in the "two indispensable prerequisites for 
their office," and the Massachusetts common school 
system "fallen into a state of general unsoundness 
and debility" were carefully treasured up against a 
possible day of reckoning. Intent upon improvement, 
the Secretary naturally dwelt more upon the defects 



BOSTON SCHOOLMASTERS 183 

of the schools than upon their excellencies. His 
consuming duties prevented his coming into close 
relations with many teachers in their work, and so 
of measuring, or even discovering, some of the diffi- 
culties under which they labored. He knew that 
teaching the young was a grand theme for the plat- 
form and for a Board report; they knew by daily 
experience that it was a most difficult and trying art. 
The Normal schools, as has been already related, were 
an offence to many, as well within as without the 
teaching profession. Even the name " Normal " was 
held up to scorn. 

The masters of the Boston schools were men of 
education and character, some of them possessing un- 
usual ability ; they had experience in their work, and 
were devoted to it; they were conservators of the 
things educational that time had tested and approved; 
they deserved well of the community that they served, 
and received that respect for the teacher which was 
traditional in New England. The Boston schools were 
the best of their kind. Even those critics who con- 
tended that the schools of the State had tended to 
deteriorate down to 1837, made an exception in favor 
of Boston. The masters were a part of the renown 
of the city, and they knew it. But, unfortunately, 
the Boston schools had not been touched by the new 
movement. They merely kept on in the old way, 
respectable, indeed, but slow. Down to 1843 it is not 
probable that any equal group of schools in the State 
had been less influenced by Mr. Mann's work than 
these schools. In the mean time the schools of other 
cities and towns were in quick motion. As a con- 



184 HORACE MANN 

temporary writer put it, other cities began to shame 
the Capital, and some people began to demand what 
was the matter with Boston. The masters felt uncom- 
fortable in view of this state of things, and ascribed 
their discomfort to Mr. Mann, whose work they began 
to challenge. Accordingly, the Boston schools and 
the Boston masters, while the best of their kind, were 
still a part of the very system that Mr. Mann wished 
to reform. So the masters went on in their self-con- 
scious way, appropriating to themselves the Secretary's 
sharp criticisms, until the cup of their endurance was 
filled to the brim. The Seventh Eeport caused it to 
overflow. The Secretary had indeed used due dili- 
gence not to wound their sensibilities. He did not 
bring the schools of Massachusetts into formal com- 
parison with those of Prussia, the schools of Boston 
with those of Dresden ; but to their sensitive nerves 
this did not mend matters. He held up the mirror, 
and they could not refrain from looking into it and 
seeing what other people saw. Or as the writer just 
referred to said: "His readers made the application 
fast enough. The Boston teachers saw that they were 
likely to lose a large share of the reputation they had 
inherited, and to be beset by still stronger importuni- 
ties for reform. Thus urged, they resolved to quit 
their neutral position, and to act vigorously in the 
offensive. They would appear as the champions of 
conservatism, and do battle stoutly against the radical 
and innovating tendencies of the times. '^ ^ 

1 See an article by Prof. Francis Boweu, The North American 
Revieiv, January, 1845, pp. 224-24(3. This article is an excellent 
contemporary view of the controversy. 



BOSTON SCHOOLMASTERS 185 

Overcoming their inertia^ tMrty-one of the masters 
sent out to the world a pamphlet of one hundred and 
forty-four pages, called Bemarks, etc./ the purpose of 
which was declared to be " in some degree to correct 
erroneous views and impressions, and thus tend to pro- 
mote a healthy tone in x^nblic sentiment in relation to 
many things connected with the welfare of our common 
schools." The masters were organized in a society called 
the Principals' Association, and it was a committee of 
this Association that sent out the pamphlet. The style 
and temper of the Bemarks betray a plurality of author- 
ship. The preface is signed by the thirty-one masters 
who united in the act, and differences of opinion among 
them are at once confessed and excused in the sentence, 
"We have no object in view but the public good, and for 
that all are ready to yield things of minor considera- 
tion." It is plain that the masters think their enemies 
are upon them, and that they must sink differences of 
opinion and make a united stand against the common 
foe. To borrow a figure used at the time, they wished 
to act in solid column, so that they might make up in 
weight what they lacked in skill and prowess. 

Before we go farther we should, guard against a 
possible misunderstanding. Kot all the teachers of 
Massachusetts or of Boston passed the Board of Edu- 
cation and its Secretary by with averted face. On 
the contrary, both Board and Secretary had no more 
enthusiastic supporters than were to be found in the 
educational profession. Still, it remains a fact, and 

1 Remm^Tcs on the Seventh Annual Report of the Hon. Horace 
Mann, Secretary of the Massachusetts Board of Education. Bos- 
ton, 1844. 



186 HORACE MANN 

one full of admonition, that the Common School E-e- 
vival found some of its most formidable foes in its 
own household.^ 

The JRemarks are divided into four subdivisions, 
each division proceeding mainly but not wholly from 
a single hand. The first division, which is a sort of 
general introduction covering thirty-eight pages, is 
much the most offensive part of the document in sub- 
stance and in tone. It is a general arraignment of 
the Secretary of the Board of Education. The writer 
begins with the customary eulogy upon the Massa- 
chusetts schools. These schools had ever been the 
pride and glory of the State, and the good cause was 
never more prosperous than at the time the Board 
of Education was formed. Great stress is laid upon 
the fruits of observation and experiment in teaching, 
and scorn is heaped upon literary and moral amateurs 
who repudiate the notion that experience is the best 
schoolmaster. The infant school, phrenology, the 
monitorial school, and the Normal school are men- 
tioned as illustrations of the vagaries of the amateurs. 
The tone of the writer is the familiar one that the 
regulation schoolmaster so easily falls into, viz., that 

1 It has sometimes been said that the Massachusetts State 
Teachers' Association, 1844, was organized in a spirit of opposi- 
tion to the Board and its policy. This, Mr. Elbridge Smith, in his 
historical address delivered at the fifteenth anniversary of the 
organization of the association, distinctly denies. Of the eighty- 
five teachers who participated in the organization, he says, only 
fifteen were opponents of Mr. Mann. At the first meeting resolu- 
tions expressing approbation of the Board were tabled without dis- 
cussion ; at the second meeting such resolutions were unanimously 
adopted. — Fifty-eighth Annual Report of the Massachusetts Board 
of Education, p. 476. 



t 



BOSTON SCHOOLMASTERS 187 

the man who is outside the sacred profession has no 
claim to the serious attention of experienced teachers. 
And this in total forgetfulness of the fact that educa- 
tion lies proximate to every great source of activity, 
and that multitudes of men and women who are not 
teachers are perfectly competent critics of educational 
results, if not of the methods and processes of teach- 
ing. It is charged over and over again that Mr. Mann 
has wantonly disparaged the teachers of Massachu- 
setts, and of Boston, and his disparagement is re- 
pelled with an air of injured innocence. Mr. Mann, 
Dr. Howe, Mr. Emerson, Cyrus Pierce, and others have 
formed a mutual admiration society, alternately prais- 
ing one another. Advantage is taken of every chance 
expression that can be twisted to answer the writer's 
purpose ; words are torn from their connection, and 
passages widely separated are brought together. Mr. 
Mann's competency to pass judgment upon schools is 
denied, and the faithfulness of his descriptions is some- 
times questioned. At times the writer takes on an air 
of patronage. In view of his antecedents, it is not per- 
haps strange that Mr. Mann has done injustice to the 
schools of his native State. He had not extended a 
warm sympathy to teachers. The casual mention of 
Boston leads the writer to ask what the Secretary 
knew about the schools of Boston. " With one voice 
the answer is, he knows comparatively nothing." In 
his preference for what was foreign, he was not less 
severe in reflecting upon his own country than Madame 
Trollope herself had been. It is assumed that Mr. 
Mann's general criticisms are to be taken in specific 
senses, and that whatever he describes he approves 



188 HORACE MANN 

unless tie explicitly states the contrary. Whether the 
Secretary praises, blames, or keeps silent, he has 
Boston in his eye. For example, Mr. Mann, speaking 
of the intense activity that he had seen in certain 
schools of Scotland, said the schools that he left at 
home must be regarded almost as dormitories, and the 
children as hibernating animals in comparison ; which 
is taken for proof conclusive, as he did not state 
the contrary, that he approved the agonism of these 
schools, and considered the Boston schools dormitories 
for animals. But we need not go farther; we may 
dismiss this division of the Remarks with the words 
employed by the contemporary writer : captious, vul- 
gar, and abusive, abounding in glaring misrepresen- 
tations, calculated to throw odium upon the Board 
of Education and its Secretary, and to excite the 
prejudices of the ignorant. 

The other divisions are in a much less shrill tone 
than the first one. While they are by no means free 
from exhibitions of ill temper, misrepresentation, and 
false imputations, they cannot fairly be called abusive ; 
they are real discussions of serious questions, and not 
mere ebullitions of spleen. There is not merely the 
semblance of argument, but real argument. The writ- 
ers do not deal so much with Mr. Mann's flowing de- 
scriptions and casual remarks as with principles of 
education and methods of teaching, concerning which 
they and Mr. Mann and many other persons disagreed. 
Mr. Mann's incompetency to pass judgment upon 
things didactic is indeed still assumed, and the as- 
sumption is maintained that he approves of things 
which he has merely described. Sometimes, it must 



BOSTON SCHOOLMASTERS 189 

be admitted, these calmer writers score points against 
the Secretary in the game. 

The second writer devotes seventeen pages to the 
Prussian mode of instruction. It will not be claimed 
that, even to-day, a final adjustment of oral instruc- 
tion and text-book instruction in elementary schools 
has been reached; much less had such an adjustment 
been reached in 1843. It is not an easy question, 
and no fixed, unvarying answer is possible. Some- 
thing will depend upon the study, the teacher, the 
pupil, and attendant circumstances. Two things, 
however, are obvious to discerning educators : text- 
book grind by the pupil and loose, flowing talk by the 
teacher are equally to be avoided. Pupils will not 
become scholars unless they apply their own powers 
to study and learn how to use books ; nor can they 
learn how to use books without actually using them. 
Still the present successors of the thirty-one Boston 
schoolmasters will not deny that, under the old regime, 
text-book work was in excess, that there was much 
need of a capable teacher to interpret the printed 
page, and that Germany was far nearer right than 
Massachusetts. 

Part third, which embraces forty-seven pages, is 
devoted to the investigation of modes of teaching 
children to read. Before he went abroad Mr. Mann 
had committed himself to the opinion that no thor- 
ough reform could be looked for in the common 
schools unless the alphabetic method of teaching read- 
ing was abolished. He believed in what was then 
called the " 'Rew " Method, now the " Word " Method, 
and his observations in Germany confirmed him in 



190 HORACE MANN 

his belief. It would seem that this subject certainly 
could be discussed by educators with calmness, and 
it is surprising to see the amount of heat that it is 
made to give forth in this controversy. We need not 
examine the laborious arguments pro and con. If 
time has not passed finally on the method of teaching 
children to read, it has certainly given judgment 
against the alphabetic method, as that was used fifty 
or sixty years ago. Perhaps there is reason to ques- 
tion whether the various modes of teaching reading, 
in the hands of good teachers, are as widely different 
as some writers and lecturers who describe them would 
have us think ; also whether more does not depend 
upon the skill of the teacher than the technique of 
the method. It is certain, at all events, that children 
did learn to read in the old-fashioned way. It is 
certain, also, that the subject was still an open one 
in 1843, and that no man should now be condemned 
simply because he then took the wrong side. 

The last division of the Remarks, forty-three pages, 
is devoted to the subject of school discipline — a 
theme that lay very near to Mr. Mann's heart. It 
was also the most important of all the specific ques- 
tions that were mooted in this controversy. 

Erom the time of his entry into the Secretary's 
office, if not from a still earlier date, Mr. Mann had 
grown increasingly distrustful of the use of corporal 
punishment in schools, and his observations abroad 
strengthened this feeling. The account that he gives 
of the regimen of kindness and conciliation in the 
German schools is one of the most vivid passages to 
be found in the Seventh Eeport. Calling to mind 



BOSTON SCHOOLMASTERS 191 

three things pertaining to the Prussian and Saxon 
schools about which he could not be mistaken, he 
said : " Though I saw hundreds of schools and thou- 
sands, — I think I may say within bounds tens of 
thousands of pupils, — I never saw one child under- 
going punishment or arraigned for misconduct. I 
never saw one child in tears from having been pun- 
ished, or from fear of being punished.'' Whether 
this was really so remarkable as he thought — whether 
teachers and pupils are not commonly on their good 
behavior when visitors from foreign countries are 
making their rounds, is a question that the writer 
in the Remarks presses sharply; but there can be 
no doubt that, in respect to physical coercion, the 
German schools of the time were far in advance of 
the Massachusetts schools. Still more, it is almost 
superfluous to add that Mr. Mann's views on the sub- 
ject were in accord with the growing sentiment of the 
time, or that they were an integral part of his philos- 
ophy of human nature and human conduct. They 
were in accord, also, with his inherited character, for, 
in the language of phrenology, his " Benevolence " was 
remarkably large. It is not strange, therefore, that 
he shrank from the use of physical force in managing 
children, a.nd recommended a principal reliance upon 
moral suasion. He was not, indeed, a non-resistant, 
a>nd did not go to the extreme of saying that the 
rod should never be seen in the schoolmaster's hand; 
on the contrary, he distinctly admitted that in the 
schools as well as in society at large when gentle 
means failed material force must be the ultima ratio ; 
but this necessity was mainly owing, in his view, to 



192 HORACE MANN 

the present imperfections of schools and of society. 
Like Moses, he yiekled something to the hardness of 
men's hearts. He believed in the increasing perfecti- 
bility of men ; and so looked forward to a time when 
reason would so abound and love so prevail that the 
rod could be relegated to the museum of cast-off school 
appliances. Indeed, his optimism was so fervid that 
the glorious vision of the prophet relative to the 
Branch out of the Rod of Jesse, they shall neither 
hurt nor destroy in all the Holy Mountain, for the 
earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord as 
the waters cover the sea, seemed to him capable of 
practical realization. But this was not the faith, 
and still less the practice of American teachers in 
1843. Not unnaturally therefore those portions of 
the Seventh Eeport that deal with this subject, when 
the schoolmasters wrote the Remarks, came in for ex- 
tended animadversion. 

The writer of this division lays down the good old 
doctrine : " All school order, like that of the family 
and society, must be established upon the basis of 
acknowledged authority, as a starting point " ; it is 
not merely the teacher's right, but his duty as well, 
to establish and enforce such authority " by an appeal 
to the most appropriate motives that a true heart and 
sound mind may select among all those which God 
has implanted in our nature " ; the higher are always 
to be preferred to the lower motives, but none are to 
be rejected "which circumstances may render fitting, 
not even the fear of physical pain ; for we believe," adds 
the writer, " that that, low as it is, will have its place, 
its proper sphere of influence, not for a limited period 



BOSTON SCHOOLMASTERS 193 

merely, till teachers can become better qualitied and 
society more morally refined, bnt while men and 
children continne to be Imnian ; that is, so long as 
schools and schoolmasters and governments and laws 
are needed." 

At this distance it is hard to see anything very 
dangerous in this writer's fundamental ideas, or to 
discover any great difference between them and those 
ideas which Mr. Mann himself had often avowed. 
In application and details there was more difference 
between the two men. But Mr. Mann saw things 
very differently. To him the fourth division, leav- 
ing the personal qualities of the first one out of 
view, was the most objectionable part of the whole 
pamphlet. 

If the Boston masters expected to have the last 
word, they counted without their host. The Bemarks 
appeared in August, and in October Mr. Mann put out 
a pamphlet of one hundred and seventy-six pages in 
reply. ^ Professor Bowen's contemporary characteriza- 
tion of this Iie2)ly as a whole is a perfectly just one. 
The Secretary, he said, had not only vindicated himself, 
but had retaliated upon his assailants with terrible 
severity ; though he disliked the use of the rod for 
children, he evidently had no objection to whipping 
schoolmasters, and in this case he had certainly plied 
the birch with remarkable dexterity and streugtli of 
arm ; and if the reader did not keep in mind the un- 

1 Repbj to the " Reraarks" of Thirty-one Boston Schoobnasters 
on the Seventh Annual Report of the Secretary of the 3fassachu!<etts 
Board of Education. Boston, Win. B. Fowlo and Naliuni Capen, 
1844. 

O 



194 HORACE MANN 

provoked nature of the attack, and the importance of 
the interests which it was meant to injure, he would 
be tempted to pity the unhappy persons exposed to 
such a merciless punishment. 

Near the beginning, Mr. Mann makes a confession 
to his critics that throws a sidelight upon the origin 
of the controversy. " A redundancy of metaphor and 
illustration," he said, "is a fault of my mind. Did 
they know how much I strive against it, how many 
troops of rhetorical figures I drive away daily, and 
bar the door of my imagination against them, they 
would pity rather than reproach me for this infirm- 
ity." Still, he has no pity for such defects of mind 
as they have shown towards him. 

In dealing with the first part of the Remarks, 
although he is terribly severe, Mr. Mann does not lay 
himself open to just criticism. He had been deeply 
wounded ; in his friends, in himself, in his office, and in 
the cause of education. But after he passes page 
seventy -three not so much can be said. When he takes 
up the more strictly pedagogical aspects of the subjects 
of contention, he is not so easily master of the situation. 
He is sometimes feeble in argument, sometimes unfair, 
and often declamatory ; he calls names, and much of 
the time speaks in a strident voice. He denounces 
what are at most matters of opinion with the energy 
of a Hebrew Prophet. Sometimes he arrogates too 
much to himself, and then, again, his personal remarks 
are not always in good taste. When he comes to 
the division of school discipline, his mind is wrought 
up to a very high pitch of excitement. All uncon- 
sciously to himself, Mr. Mann, in composing the 



BOSTON SCHOOLMASTEES 196 

Reply, was furnisliing an interesting illustration of 
his own theory of moral government. His handling 
of the schoolmasters can be justified only upon the 
principle that, in emergencies, compassion and soft 
words as disciplines for men must give place to severe 
rebuke and even severer punishment. He closes with 
an eloquent appeal to all men to uuite in an educa- 
tional awakening that is most urgently demanded by 
the needs of society. 

Near the close of the Reply, the Secretary gives a 
brilliant and even pathetic summary of " the unexam- 
pled trials and difiiculties " that he had encountered 
in his office. He found an almost unanimous opinion 
among intelligent men as to the necessity of great 
improvements in the common schools, but also the 
most opposite and irreconcilable notions as to the best 
methods for effecting these improvements. He had 
been brought into contact with every variety of opin- 
ion, every form of personal predilection and pecuniary 
motive, and such contact sometimes became conflict. 
The improvements made in the schools cost large 
sums of money, and the new appropriations and taxes 
(amounting to ^100,000 annually) had aroused the 
serious opposition of many tax-payers, some of whom 
had suggested that the Secretary should be compelled 
to foot the bills. In 1837 there were in use in the 
schools three hundred different kinds of text-books, 
while not more than twenty or thirty were needed; 
and the efforts of the Secretary to produce uniformity, 
through official advice to local authorities, had brought 
down upon him book compilers, copyright owners, and 
venders, who found their sales daily diminishing. 



196 HORACE MANN 

The school district libraries, while regarded with 
greater unanimity of opinion than any other branch 
of the system, had still provoked much opposition 
on account of their cost and the character of the 
books chosen. Owing to the raising of the standard 
of the schools, many old teachers had been thrown 
out of employment; and although these had on the 
whole acted a very magnanimous part, "yet it could 
not be expected that every involuntary ex-teacher 
would be able to adjust, in a measure wholly satis- 
factory to himself, the moral relations between the 
loss of his monthly stipend and the well-being of his 
neighbor's children, or would wholly forgive any indi- 
vidual to whom the failure of his income might be, 
in part at least, attributed." The improvement of the 
common schools had tended to diminish private schools, 
and the conductors of such schools could not always 
think well of the cause that led to their personal 
losses. Politics also and religion had proved to be 
more or less disturbing elements. These were a few 
of the contending interests in the fierce arena into 
which he had been thrown. Men had not waited for 
official acts deserving of condemnation, but had as- 
sailed his private convictions. Sometimes he made 
reply to assailants, and sometimes he did not. But 
never did he answer with such vigor as he answered 
the Boston schoolmasters. Here he felt that he had 
been wounded in the house, or at least in what should 
have been the house, of his friends. Reviewing the 
whole matter, he said he deeply mourned that he had 
not had more wisdom wherewith to meet the trying 
emergencies that had arisen ; but he had no occasion 



BOSTON SCHOOLMASTERS 197 

to mourn that in any instance lie had not used all 
the foresight and wisdom and prudence with which 
Heaven had endowed him. He was ready to lay down 
his oflB.ce in favor of any man who would devote him- 
self as unreservedly to its interest as he had done. 
When the Board of Education were ready to dispense 
with his services, he was ready to dispense with their 
appointment. 

Mr. Mann's invitation to the masters to meet him 
on the platform of practical work and to forego con- 
troversy was not accepted. In December, 1844, the 
Association appointed a committee to rejoin to the 
Reply, and in due course of time the Rejoinder 
appeared.^ This pamphlet also consists of four parts. 
The first section, consisting of fifty-five pages, is de- 
voted to the more general features of the controversy ; 
the second section, fifty-six pages, the third, forty-four 
pages, and the last, sixty-one pages deal with the 
topics presented in the corresponding divisions of the 
Remarks. Two of the thirty-one masters had with- 
drawn from the controversy, leaving twenty-nine to 
concur in the Rejoinder. Save alone the first one, 
the several divisions were written by the men who 
had contributed the corresponding parts of the earlier 
pamphlet. The new publication contains some apol- 
ogy, some explanation ; the old views are, in the main, 
restated, but in a less offensive manner and tone ; the 
writers, or at least some of them, are plainly aware 

1 Rejoinder to the ''Reply " of the Hon. Horace Mcnm, Secretary 
of the Massachusetts Board of Education, to the ''Remarks " of the 
Association of Boston Masters upon his Seventh Annual Report. 
Boston, 1845. 



198 HORACE MANN 

that they are rowing against the stream of public 
opinion. 

Mr. Mann hastened to publish his Answer to 
the Rejoinder} It appeared in August, 1845, a 
pamphlet of one hundred and twenty-four pages. 
In the early part of this document, he gives some in- 
teresting history pertaining to the progress of the 
controversy. When he learned that some of the 
Boston teachers had taken offence at the Seventh 
Report, he sought an interview with them, in order, 
if possible, to prevent an open rupture. His friends, 
also, interposed their good offices, having the same 
object in view. Again, when he had published his 
Reply, he offered a solid and enduring peace. But 
in both cases his overtures of peace were refused ; in 
the second one, after having been first accepted. 
Under these circumstances, he had no alternative but 
to answer their renewed attacks. Duty to himself, 
to his friends, to his office, to the Board of Edu- 
cation, to the cause he represented, all demanded 
that he should expose once more the fallacy of their 
arguments and the falsity of their allegations. Ee- 
ferring to the charge that he had been unduly severe, 
he said the accusation of mental incapacity had been 
preferred against him, and he did not think himself 
under any special obligations to furnish his critics, by 
the tameness and impotence of his replies, with gra- 
tuitous evidence to support their charge. 

'^Answer to the "Bejoinder" of Tioenty-nine Boston School- 
masters, part of the ^^ Thirty -one '^ icho published "Bemarks" on 
the Seventh Annual Beport of the Secretary of the Massachusetts 
Board of Education. Boston, 1845. 



BOSTON SCHOOLMASTERS 199 

So far as the principals were concerned, tlie 
Answer closed the controversy. Charges of misrep- 
resentation, garbling, ignorance, prevarication, and 
falsehood are thickly sprinkled over the pages of the 
documents. Still, the two last pamphlets are in bet- 
ter temper than the two first. In his last pamphlet, 
Mr. Mann summed up, in three propositions, his code 
in respect to discipline : " First, that it is the duty of 
the State to adopt measures for qualifying teachers. 
Second, that school committeemen are sentinels sta- 
tioned at the door of every schoolhouse to see that 
none but the very best teachers who can possibly be 
procured enter the schoolroom. And third, that it is 
the duty of the teacher in governing his school to ex- 
haust all the higher motives and agencies that he can 
command ; but if these should in any case prove un- 
availing, he may then lawfully resort to corporal 
punishment as the supplement of all the rest." 

This controversy attracted much attention, and made 
a deep impression upon the public mind. It had much 
to do with fixing Horace Mann's place in educational 
history. The champion of the new regime had met 
the champions of the old and overthrown them in the 
arena of public debate. The teachers of the new re- 
gime completed the overthrow in the schoolhouses. 
Nowhere, perhaps, did the controversy lead to more 
direct and beneficial results than in Boston. As a 
matter of course, the eyes of the State and, to a de- 
gree, of the country were now fixed upon the schools 
of that city. If there be truth in the proverb, the 
ears of the Boston masters must have been kept con- 
tinually burning. For example, Mr. Emerson, com- 



200 HOKACE MANN 

menting upon the conduct of the masters in sending 
out the Remarks, observes: "Here they are seeking 
to make us satisfied with the schools and teachers in 
methods and motives as they have been and as they 
are." He asks : " Is it possible that these gentlemen 
are disappointed in the declarations of the Seventh 
Eeport ? Could they really expect that a person who 
had seen the best schools abroad would come home 
prepared to pronounce .panegyrics upon the grammar 
schools of Boston ? Can it be that they are not aware 
that many of their fellow-citizens look upon these 
schools as doing very little, as compared with what 
might be done ? Have they learned nothing from the 
almost uniform look of disappointment with which 
intelligent strangers leave their schools ? " ^ 

The Boston public now began to take a new interest 
in their schools, while the school committee learned 
to trust less in the masters and to look more closely 
into things for themselves. The masters of the gram- 
mar and writing schools had formed a close corpora- 
tion, looking out for one another's interests, dictating 
the election of masters and teachers, and controlling 
to a great degree the educational policy of the city. 
But their power soon began to break under the new 
public scrutiny. Some much needed reforms began 
to take their rise. So far as Boston was concerned, 
nothing gave Mr. Mann so much pleasure as a new 
rule relating to corporal punishment that the school 
committee soon adopted. This rule made it the duty 
of the masters and teachers in charge of the schools 

1 Observations on "Remarks on the Seventh Annual Report of 
the Hon. Horace MannJ" 



BOSTON SCHOOLMASTERS 201 

to keep a record of all inflictions of such punish- 
ment, subject to the committee's quarterly exami- 
nation; the record to give, as exactly as might be 
practicable, the nature of the offence, the age and 
sex of the pupil, the instrument emploj^ed, and the 
degree of severity used. Corporal punishment was 
defined to mean all inflictions of physical pain. It 
may be added that the amount of vdiipping in the 
Boston schools had been well-nigh incredible. 

Mr. Mann's letters written at this time throw much 
light upon his controversy with the schoolmasters. In 
April, 1844, he wrote to George Combe that his Eeport 
had met with unusual favor, but there were owls who, 
to adapt the world to their own eyes, would always keex^ 
the sun from rising. Again, December 1, he said the 
very things that made his Eeport acceptable to others, 
made it hateful to the Association of schoolmasters. 
Meantime his reply was working; all the papers 
but the ultra-orthodox ones were earnest against 
the masters ; the issue would be carried into the 
election, for the voters were determined to have better 
schools and less flogging. In July, 1845, Mr. Mann 
wrote to S. J. May that the Rejoinder had fallen 
from the press dead born; two orthodox papers had 
tried to endorse it, thinking that whatever was di- 
rected against a Unitarian was for the glory of G-od. 
Writing to Combe in September of the sa^me year, 
Mann said the school committee had divided on the 
issues that had been raised, the old members looking 
upon the criticism that was current as a reflection 
upon themselves ; there was also a tendency in the 
community to divide into two parties, ^^ young Boston" 



202 HOEACE MANN 

and the laudatores tempoi^is acti. Still a great change 
for the better had been effected; it was estimated 
that corporal punishment had fallen off twenty-five 
per cent ; the masters had brought on the annual elec- 
tion in advance of the ordinary time; but, notwith- 
standing the most earnest efforts on the part of the 
conservatives and those who wore their eyes in the 
back part of their heads, four of the number had 
been turned out — a work which twelve months before 
would have been deemed as impossible as to turn four 
peers out of the House of Lords. And then the next 
month, referring to a report of the Boston School 
Committee of the grammar "and writing schools, he 
wrote to Cyrus Pierce: "What a pile of thunder- 
bolts ! Jupiter never had more lying by his side 
when he had ordered a fresh lot wherewith to punish 
the wicked. If the masters see fit to assail me again, 
I think I can answer them in such a way as to make 
it redound to the glory of God." 

A curious light is thrown upon the screen by this 
brief communication that Mr. Mann sent to Dr. Jarvis 
in the midst of the controversy : " Can you do anything 
for a brain that has not slept for three weeks ? I can 
feel the flame in the centre of my cranium blazing and 
flaring round just as you see that of a pile of brush 
burning on a distant heath in the wind. What can be 
done to extinguish it ? " 

Mr. Mann contributed passages to this long contro- 
versy that his most devoted admirers cannot read to-day 
without pain. It is not at all necessary to cite pas- 
sages that would sustain this allegation. But we 
must remember, first, the provocation that he had 



i 



BOSTON SCHOOLMASTERS 203 

received, and secondly, the qualities of his mind. 
Before the masters opened their batteries, his work 
had been opposed in a na^rrow and sectarian s]oirit by 
many to whom he had looked for better things, and 
the strong feeling thus aronsed accentuated his reply 
to them. Then the Remarks and the Rejoinder 
merited vigorous treatment. Besides, the support 
that the masters received from certain quarters still 
further aggravated the situation. Then Mr. Mann 
was liable to the mistake that men of his character 
often fall into, that of discovering moral elements in 
mere matters of opinion or judgment. Above all, it 
must be remembered that, without the imagination, 
the moral fervor, the gifts of speech, and the devotion 
to the cause that appear upon almost every page of 
the documents that he contributed to the controversy, 
he would never have been, nor could have been, the 
leader that he was in our great educational revival. 
It is only in a special sense that the tongues of the 
prophets are subject to the prophets. Moreover, a 
further fact is not to be lost sight of; at bottom 
the educational revival was not a pedagogical move- 
ment, it was not merely a question of introducing 
some new studies into the schools, or of improving 
methods of teaching and government ; it was rather a 
moral movement — the arousing of the people of the 
country to the crying need of universal education. 
We must take the prophets with their limitations. 
Even in his hoarsest passages we must hear Horace 
Mann for his cause. 

Two of the topics that were mooted in this cele- 
brated controversy invite a somewhat fuller handling 



204 HOEACE MANN 

at our liands. The first is suggested by the words 
"prizes/^ "rewards/' "emulation." The desire of sur- 
passing others, or of gaining distinction, is one of 
the most powerful principles of human nature. Dr. 
Bain declares that it is the "most powerful known 
stimulant to intellectual application." ^ Ho\y far may 
this stimulant be resorted to by the teacher, if at all ? 
The answers to this question cover a wide range of 
ideas. On the one hand stand the Jesuits, the most 
accomplished schoolmasters of their time, who used 
emulation with great persistence, skill, and apparent 
success ; on the other hand stand those teachers and 
moralists who say emulation should never be employed 
with children under any circumstances. Mr. Mann 
belonged to the second of these groups. He looked 
with complete disfavor upon the whole " prize sys- 
tem," as he called it, and believed in appealing to the 
love of knowledge and to moral motives. Nor will 
it be denied that the recent movement of ideas and 
practice has been strongly in that direction. To a 
degree, however, the war is a war of words, as can 
be easily shown. 

The more powerful any principle of action is, the 
greater the dangers that attend its use when mis- 
directed. Dr. Bain, while not disallowing emula- 
tion in education, finds that it is marked by four 
serious defects. It is an anti-social principle, it is apt 
to be too energetic, it is limited to a small number 
of persons, and it makes a merit of superior natural 
gifts. But emulation is a form of competition, and 
competition cannot be banished from the school any 
1 Education as a Science, p. 112. 



BOSTON SCHOOLMASTERS 206 

more tlian it can be banished from real life. It is 
in the world, and here in some form and measure it 
will remain. Pupils do compete and tvill compete in 
school; there is no way of preventing their compet- 
ing, even if that were desirable, which may well be 
doubted. Now emulation is competition j^his, and the 
danger comes in with the addition. It is idle to 
wage a fruitless war against this powerful princii^le 
of action ; but it is not idle, it is rather most impor- 
tant, to kee|) it within bounds, not allowing it to 
devastate the schools through the generation of selfish 
passions. Dr. Howe was quoted in the controversy as 
having said of the institution over which he presided : 
" We have no corporal punishment, no prizes, no tak- 
ing precedence in class, no degradation. Emulation 
there is, and will be ; Nature provides for this in the 
self-esteem of each individual." And if we remember 
that emulation is a form of competition, there is no 
gainsaying Dr. Howe's words. 

The other topic is school discipline. In an elo- 
quent passage of his History, Lord Macaulay celebrates 
" that sensitive and restless compassion which has, 
in our time, extended a powerful protection to the 
factory child, to the Hindoo widow, to the negro- 
slave ; which pries into the stores and water-casks of 
every emigrant ship ; which winces at every lash laid 
on the back of the drunken soldier ; which will not 
suffer the thief in the hulks to be ill-fed or over- 
worked, and which has repeatedly endeavored to save 
the life even of the murderer." jSTo class of ideas aud 
no kind of practice has been more profoundly affected 
by this sensitive and restless compassion than the 



206 HORACE MANN 

ideas and practice relating to the rearing, and espe- 
cially to the governing, of children. The child regime 
that prevailed a few centuries ago, and that, in a 
somewhat mitigated form, continued down to a recent 
time, now fills us with feelings akin to horror. 
Martin Luther says he was whipped at school fifteen 
times one morning, all because he could not tell what 
he had never been taught. His father, too, flogged 
him until the blood ran, which is an example of the 
fact that, in respect to discipline, the home is likely 
to give law to the school. It is no wonder, then, that 
the German Reformer made his celebrated recommen- 
dation, that in bringing up children, the apple should 
be placed beside the rod. So far has the innova- 
tion gone that some persons fear the present regime 
threatens to undermine the stronger virtues. Good 
feeling, conpassion, sympathy, we are told, can never 
take the place of truth, justice, and righteousness. 
John Stuart Mill, describing the training that he re- 
ceived from his father, said: " I rejoice in the decline 
of the old brutal and tyrannical system of teaching, 
which, however, did succeed in forming habits of 
application ; but the new, as it seems to me, is train- 
ing up a race of men who will be incapable of doing 
anything which is disagreeable to them." And on a 
related point : " Much must be done, and much must 
be learned, by children for which rigid discipline and 
known liability to punishment are indispensable as 
means. It is, no doubt, a very laudable effort in 
modern teaching to render as much as possible of 
what the young are required to learn easy and inter- 
esting to them. But when this principle is pushed 



BOSTON SCHOOLMASTERS 207 

to the length, of not requiring them to learn anything 
hut what has been made easy and interesting, one of 
the chief objects of education has been sacrificed." ^ 

The fact that children, in some way, must be 
brought to submit to the direction and guidance of 
their seniors is too plain for discussion. The man 
who denies it is already beyond the reach of ar- 
gument. Life itself, not to speak of intellectual, 
moral, and practical well-being, compels at least a 
measure of such submission. How shall it be secured ? 
By rewards and prizes ? These are well enough, neces- 
sary, indeed, in their place; but they do not go to 
the foundation of character, even in those cases where 
compliance is seciired, to make no mention of the 
cases in which they fail. By moral suasion? This 
is all-important, for education should look up to a 
rational end; but moral suasion, even when success- 
ful, does not reach the foundation of character either. 
Suppose you fail to secure compliance, what then ? 
The foundation of character is obedience, and this 
rests upon authority. The fear of the Lord is the 
beginning of wisdom. Moreover, the method of obe- 
dience is faith or belief, not sight or knowledge. 
The foundation of character is laid, if well laid, 
before the child can respond to argument and per- 
suasion. In other words, the moral habits of the 
individual originate in his relations with the moral 
beings about him. They can originate nowhere else. 
To quote an able writer : " We are introduced to 
society in a state of total dependence, we follow our 
own wills only in so far as we are allowed, and we 
1 Autobiography. New York, 1873, pp. 32, 52. 



208 HORACE MANN 

have to accommodate ourselves to our circumstances, 
to do and to refrain from doing, at tlie dictation of 
superior power. Tliis habituation to obedience, in pre- 
scribed lines, is our first moral education, and repre- 
sents by far the greatest part of that education in 
its whole compass. By acting and reacting on the nu- 
merous individuals that we encounter in various social 
relations, we obtain both the knowledge of duty and 
the motive to do it." The same writer declares 
further that "this primary and personal source of 
moral education is analogous to the education in 
physical laws by personal experience of them work- 
ing for good and for evil." ^ No doubt such a moral 
discipline as this is somewhat severe and painful, but 
it is necessary, because it is the method of Nature. 
It is not, however, brutal or cruel unless parents and 
teachers see fit to make it so. It means no more 
and no less than such deference to authority as the 
moral law itself recognizes. It is, to be sure, most 
desirable and necessary that the child shall, as rapidly 
as possible, ascend to a higher level; the level of 
argument and persuasion, of rational conviction and 
motive, the level where perfect love casts out fear; 
but this ascent cannot be made out of due time. 
Love is the end of the commandment, not the begin- 
ning; the fulfilment and not the initiation of the 
law. The severe and the gentle virtues are essential 
to good character, and are therefore called for in the 
education of children; but their reconciliation, espe- 
cially in practice, is no easy matter. How shall Mercy 

1 Education as a Science, by Alexander Bain, LL.D,, etc. New 
York, 1889, pp. 399, 400. 



BOSTON SCHOOLMASTERS 209 

and Truth meet together ? Eighteousness and Peace 
kiss each other ? The Teacher to whom these phrases 
are commonly referred^ found the common ground on 
which to affect the reconciliation in benevolence or 
love; but love, with Him, was perfectly consistent 
with indignant rebuke and stern punishment/ 

This controversy suggests the remark, which is also 
pertinent to the other controversy, that to put the so- 
called reforms upon their merits, Dr. W. T. Harris, 
commenting upon the struggles over ideas that have 
occurred in Massachusetts, has said : " The fine quali- 
ties of soul that discover lofty ideals and compare 
them with existing customs and usages, and thus hold 
up to view the defects and shortcomings of what is — 
these high qualities of soul are met by other high 
qualities of mind engaged in discovering all the good 
that is realized in institutions as they are. Very 
great ability in the administration of institutions 
already existing implies a keen perception of the good 
points which they possess. Hence we have this para- 
dox : Progressive changes originate here in Massachu- 
setts because the conservative element is so intelligent 
and understands so well the good that is still contained 
in the old. The would-be reformer has nowhere else 
to submit to so severe an ordeal as here. Hence there 
is no place where a reform starts with so many chances 
of success ; for it is sure to be winnowed of its imprac- 
tical before it gets on its feet here." ^ 

1 Semi-Centennial Celebration, State Normal School, Framing- 
ham, July 2, 1889, pp. 10, 11. 



CHAPTEE IX 

THE CONTROVERSY WITH RELIGIOUS SECTARIES 

It might have been foreseen, and perhaps was fore- 
seen, that the educational revival in Massachusetts, 
and in the country at large, would sooner or later 
encounter serious religious opposition. For more than 
a century and a half from the founding of the public 
schools in that Commonwealth dogmatic religious in- 
struction was given in them without let or hindrance. 
This was one object that the founders of these schools 
had in view in founding them. At first the colony 
was practically homogeneous in religion, and the ut- 
most pains were taken to keep it so. The Church 
and the State were but the obverse and reverse side 
of the same society. The free use in the schools of 
the shorter of the two Westminster catechisms gave 
no offence. The frequent visits of the minister to the 
school to catechise the children were taken as a thing 
of course. In fact, the minister had a definite educa- 
tional status assigned him by the school law. Then 
Tlie New England Primer, so long milk for New Eng- 
land babes, was Calvinistic through and through. 
Such was the old order of things. About the begin- 
ning of this century a new order set in. Dogmatic 
instruction iii the schools began to retire into the back- 
ground. The Shorter Catechism progressively fell out of 

210 



CONTROVEKSY WITH RELIGIOUS SECTARIES 211 

the schools. The minister's visits for the old purpose 
became less and less frequent. The New England 
Primer began slowly to disappear. Still the Consti- 
tution of 1780 made it the duty of the legislatures and 
magistrates in all future periods of the Commonwealth 
^^to countenance and inculcate the principles of hu- 
manity and general benevolence, public and private 
charity, industry and frugality, honesty and punctu- 
ality in their dealings, sincerity and good humor, 
and all social and generous sentiments among the 
people." 

The new order was due to a number of causes. 
The various dissenting bodies were encroaching upon 
the ground so long held by the established Church : 
the Baptists, Methodists, Episcopalians, Universalists, 
and Koman Catholics. Each of these bodies had its 
own theological type and standard, and was more and 
more disposed to assert itself as stronger it grew. 
But no such body could expect to put its own creed 
into the schools : all it could do effectually was to 
oppose the teaching of the old creed. The split of 
the historic Church, when it came, resulting in the 
Congregational and Unitarian bodies as we know 
them, tended to complicate the situation. Eurther- 
more, the spirit that animated the so-called Orthodox 
or evangelical denominations became more liberal, 
while the laicizing of the State and all its functions 
went steadily forward. 

The new order was ushered in so gradually and 
easily that it is quite impossible to assign to it a 
definite date. The catechism, the minister as an 
authoritative religious teacher, and Tlie New England 



212 HORACE MANN 

Primer did not quit the scliools at any s]3ecified time : 
tliey were quitting tliem for a generation or more. 
The most significant fact in the long process is the 
Act of 1827, which declared that school committees 
should never direct to be used or purchased in any of 
the town schools any school books which were calcu- 
lated to favor the tenets of any particular sect of 
Christians. This act, which was re-enacted in 1835, 
may be considered from two points of view. For the 
most part it marked a change that had already been 
effected. It was one of those acts of legislation that, 
in great degree, merely register what the slow opera- 
tion of public opinion has already accomplished. 
Still this was not all. The old instruction, more or 
less toned down perhaps, still lingered in some schools, 
and the new legislation would naturally tend to hasten 
its departure. It may be said, therefore, that to all 
intents and purposes the old regime had been wound 
up and the new one practically inaugurated before 
Mr. Mann came to the Secretary's office. But this did 
not prevent friends of the old regime holding him 
responsible for the change. 

The educational revival was something more than 
the setting up of a new educational order, and also 
something less. It revealed to men's minds more fully 
the state of things that had been for some time exist- 
ing. Among other things, it brought society to a 
much fuller self -consciousness in respect to educa- 
tion than it had known before. This awakening 
caused men — some men at least — some rude shocks. 
Among other facts that were now laid bare was this 
one, that the school of the Puritans, with its dog- 



CONTROVERSY WITH RELIGIOUS SECTARIES 213 

matic instruction in religion, had either disappeared 
or was on the point of disappearing. Naturally, many 
of those who saw this with regret, recognizing that 
the Board of Education and its Secretary were the 
two great factors that had been recently introduced 
into the school system, thought these agencies were 
the causes of the unwelcome change that was taking 
place, and opposed them for this reason. Sectarian 
opinion and sectarian feeling were far sharper edged 
in 1837 than they are in 1897, and it was perfectly 
well known to everybody that Mr. Mann was a Uni- 
tarian and that, from the first, a considerable portion 
of the members of the Board were so-called liberals 
in their religious views. Men were by no means as 
familiar as we are with the conception of the civil 
school — an institution organized and conducted for 
the purpose of teaching the children of the State the 
knowledge that they need for the uses of life and for 
grounding them in good morals, but that has nothing 
whatever to do with any formal or dogmatic religious 
teaching. It is not strange, therefore, that men 
began to beat the drum ecclesiastic. For the first 
time in the United States was heard the cry that 
has assumed in later times the well-known form, 
" The public schools are Godless." Those who raised 
this cry were actuated by different motives. Some 
no doubt thought the old system of religious teaching 
could still be retained, at least in part. Some im- 
proved the opportunity to vent their ill feeling towards 
the Board and the Secretary. Some took advantage 
of the prevailing sectarian prejudice to accomplish a 
purpose that .they had formed for other reasons, viz., 



214 HORACE MANN 

that of breaking down the new educational system. 
Some ill-informed men, it may well be believed, actu- 
ally thought the Board and the Secretary had wrought 
the change that had been made in the schools. 

The struggle that now ensued in Massachusetts 
was the first of its kind witnessed in the country. 
Since that day it has been repeated in many other 
States. Nor can it be confidently predicted that it 
will not be repeated again. In fact, in some form 
more or less active this struggle has been going on 
from that day to this. The issue is confessedly a 
most important one. It involves nothing else than 
the question of adjusting the State school to the whole 
existing system of agencies by which the religious 
training of children is carried on, the family, the 
Sunday-school, and the Church, Horace Mann was 
the first conspicuous educator in the United States 
to meet and answer this question. We have, there- 
fore, both a personal interest and an historical interest 
in the religious controversies in which as Secretary 
of the Board of Education he became involved. 

It will be remembered that Mr. Mann incurred criti- 
cism on religious grounds in the course of his first 
grand circuit of the State, in the autumn of 1837. 
Within a year some of the religious newspapers began 
to ask questions and suggest difiiculties in respect 
to the new educational movement. In October, 1838, 
The New York Observer, with hostile intent, asked 
what would be the effect of the Board of Education 
upon religious instruction in the schools; and soon 
after The Recorder of Boston entered upon the course 
that led Mr. Mann to write in 1844 that for seven 



CONTROVERSY WITH RELIGIOUS SECTARIES 215 

years that journal had seemed to omit no opportunity 
to impugn his motives and misrepresent his conduct. 
The refusal of the Board to introduce into the schools 
the American Sunday School Library, although it had 
no legal authority in the matter, gave offence. The 
critics were determined to see an anti-religious bias in 
the course that the Board pursued, and this determi- 
nation was an important factor in the attempts made 
in 1840, 1841 to abolish the Board. But, strangely 
enough, some people believed it to be the purpose of 
the Board to thrust religious teaching into the schools. 
Thus The Trumpet made this charge directly and per- 
sistently. It is needless, perhaps, to -point out that 
the persons who entertained these different views 
belonged to the Orthodox and heterodox portions of 
the community respectively. For a few years Mr. 
Mann does not appear to have given much public 
attention to these attacks ; but he strove in private 
interviews, and with some success, to overcome public 
opposition. He was finally forced into the public 
arena. 

On February 23, 1844, there appeared in The 
Christian Witness and Church Advocate, an organ of 
the Episcopalians published in Boston, a communi- 
cation entitled '' Christian Education," the writer of 
which demanded to know wherein the system that 
Stephen Girard had established for Girard College 
was different from the system that the Board of 
Education, or rather its Secretary, was imposing upon 
the schools of Massachusetts. The question was 
commended to all Christian denominations holding 
Orthodox creeds. This communication at once pre- 



216 HORACE MANN 

cipitated a general engagement of artillery and small 
arms, in which Horace Mann, the editor of The Wit- 
ness, the writer of the communication, and numerous 
editors and contributors to the public press partici- 
pated. Several circumstances conduced to this result. 
One was the fact that the communication in The 
Witness was written by Mr. Edward A. Newton of 
Pittsfield, a former member of the Board of Educa- 
tion. A second one was the interest in Girard College, 
excited by Mr. Webster's celebrated argument before 
the Supreme Court in the Girard will case. The con- 
troversy with the Boston schoolmasters was also going 
on at the same time. The engagement was of a desul- 
tory character. Some of the principal points of attack 
and defence will be enumerated.^ 

Mr. Girard's system was drawn from the writings 
of Paine and Yolney, and was subversive of Chris- 
tianity and morality. The Common School Library 
tended to undermine Orthodox religion ; most of the 
writings of Luther, Calvin, Cranmer, Knox, Wesley, 
and Fuller could not be admitted to it. Tlie Com- 
mon School Journal, the Secretary's Eeports, and 
the Normal schools were parts of a system designed 
to rob the people of their ancient faith. The Board 
of Education was wholly useless and burdensome to 
the State, to say nothing of the religious objections 

i The Common School Controversy, consisting of Three Letters 
of the Secretary of the Board of Education of the State of Massa- 
chusetts, in Reply to Charges prefet^ed against the Board by the 
Editor of the " Christian Witness," and by Edicard A. Newton, 
Esq., of Pittsfield, once a Member of the Board ; to lohich are added 
Extracts from the Daily Press, in Regardto the Controversy. Bos- 
ton, 1844. Printed by J. N. Bradley & Co. 



CONTROVERSY WITH RELIGIOUS SECTARIES 217 

to it; it was a central, all-absorbing power, anti-re- 
publican in all its bearings, well adapted perhaps to 
Prussia and other European despotisms, but not 
wanted in the United States. The construction that 
the Board and Secretary put on the law of 1827 was 
an excrescence. That law was never intended to ex- 
clude from the schools the teaching of the great 
doctrines of the Gospel ; the State authorities had 
no right, for example, to interpret the law so as 
to exclude from the schools the Shorter Catechism; 
the intention of the legislators of 1827 was to exclude 
only the teaching of church government and disci- 
pline. Sound morality could rest only upon the 
orthodox doctrines of grace ; these should be taught, as 
a great majority of the people were Orthodox. There 
was no religion in which all were agreed that could be 
taught in the schools ; there was not a point of a doc- 
trinal character in the Christian scheme that was not 
disputed or disallowed by some ; there might be a 
pretty general agreement about the precepts of the 
Gospel, but the sons of the Puritans would never be 
willing to have religious teaching in their public 
schools limited to precepts. Mr. Girard allowed the 
Bible to be read in his school, but not interpreted, and 
the Board of Education had adopted the same rule for 
the Normal schools of Massachusetts. A Papist, if 
he became a member of the Board of Education, 
might object to the received translation of the Bible, 
and on Mr. Mann's principles its retention could not 
be defended. Then, how was the child of wicked or 
indifferent parents ever to learn the way of salvation, 
if he did not learn it at school ? The schools should 



218 HORACE MANN 

not be opened to the doctrines of the Millerites or the 
Mormons, but the}^ should be made nurseries of im- 
mortal beings, who had souls to save as well as minds 
to be taught. In short, the demand was that the 
Puritan regime should be thoroughly re-established. 
And yet, these Episcopalian controversialists must 
have known that the old Puritans would have made 
it very uncomfortable for them, if they had fallen 
into their hands. 

Mr. Mann's three letters were written with his 
usual vigor and point, and in parts with much warmth 
of feeling. Besides correcting misstatements and mis- 
representations he brought out clearly the principle 
on which the whole contention turned. These are 
some of his more important points : 

The law of 1827 was intended to do just what the 
Board construed it to mean, exclude sectarian instruc- 
tion from the schools. Instead of clergymen being 
excluded from the management of the schools of 
Massachusetts, as they were from G-irard College, 
five clergymen were at the time members of the 
Board of Education, three of them Orthodox, while 
a majority of the school committee-men throughout 
the State were also clergymen. The Board of Educa- 
tion had always acted as a unit, Orthodox and hetero- 
dox alike, in proposing the very measures that were 
so sharply criticised. The Bible was an invaluable 
book for forming the character of children, but it was 
not at all necessary to teach the children in the schools 
the theological creeds. On the other hand, to attempt 
to do such a thing would necessarily break up the 
common school system altogether. The Bible should 



CONTROVERSY WITH RELIGIOUS SECTARIES 219 

be read in the schools, but Tvithout note or comment. 
The proportion of the population of the State that was 
Orthodox had been much exaggerated ] from one-fourth 
to one-third were liberal Christians, not to speak of 
those who denied the name Christian and the Catho- 
lics. The Massachusetts system was republican and 
American; compulsory religious instruction in the 
schools was the despotic method that prevailed in 
Prussia and other European despotisms. 

Historically, one of the most interesting passages 
in the three letters is some paragraphs in which Mr. 
Mann rebuts the contention that the Assembly's Cate- 
chism had been driven out of the schools by the 
Board of Education. In the nine eastern counties 
of the State, containing more than five-eighths of its 
population, the Catechism and the teaching of Ortho- 
dox doctrines had been mainly, but not entirely, dis- 
continued long before the existence of the Board. In 
many places the discontinuance dated back to the 
beginning of the present century. He had met with 
many persons educated in the schools who had never 
seen the Assembly's Catechism. In all the common 
school conventions that he had ever attended, in 
nearly all of which the subject of moral and religious 
instruction was presented, there had been but one 
instance where Orthodox teaching was advocated, 
and that was resisted on the spot by an Orthodox 
clergyman. The whole current of the school com- 
mittees' reports was averse to the introduction of sec- 
tarianism into the schools ; of more than a thousand 
of these documents, there were but two of a contrary 
description. This rapid resume will answer for Mr. 



220 HORACE MANN 

Mann's defence, especially as we are about to traverse 
mncli of the same ground again. But first tlie remark, 
that the stream of discussion in the public journals 
ran steadily and strongly against the sectaries. 

Much the most picturesque of all Mr. Mann's con- 
troversies was the one with the Kev. Matthew Hale 
Smith.^ Mr. Smith's mental character can be inferred 
from the title and construction of the sermon in 
which he attacked the Board of Education and its 
Secretary. This sermon was preached before the 
Church and the Society of the Pilgrims, Boston, 
October 10, 1846, and was one of those exaggerated 
efforts in which sensational clergymen indulge when 
they take it in hand to deal comprehensively with the 
morals of society. The preacher entitled his dis- 
course ^' The Ark of God on a jSTew Cart," using as a 
text the well-known words of 2 Samuel vi. 3. The 
preacher charged that immorality and crime were 
increasing at a rapid rate, and asserted that the prin- 
cipal reason was the abandonment of the divinely 
appointed agencies for repressing crime and cultivat- 
ing virtue, and the adoption of human devices. Soci- 
ety, like Uzzah, had been stricken because, like 
Uzzah, it had neglected the divine commandments. 
The ark had been put on a new cart drawn by oxen, 
instead of being borne on the shoulders of the priests 
of God. The growth of juvenile depravity was due 
to the absence of good home instruction, . and to 

1 In his letters to George Combe, Mr. Mann called Smith "one 
of the wild beasts of Ephesus," an "untamable hyena," and "a 
child of sin and Satan." Smith had once been a preacher of the 
annihilation of the wicked, then a Universalist, and was now a 
Calvinist of the Old Testament stamp. 



CONTROVERSY WITH RELIGIOUS SECTARIES 221 

attempts to mend the divine legislation. Modern 
reformers had taken the education of youth under 
their special care, and^ denying the propriety of early 
religious training, had made common schools the 
theatre of their experiments and labor. The common 
schools of Boston were denounced as both corrupt and 
corrupting. However, the part of the sermon that 
most interests us is the following : 

"An effort has been made, and that too with 
some success, to do three things with our common 
schools : (1) To get out of them the Bible and all 
religious instruction; (2) to abolish the use of the rod 
and all correction but a little talk; (3) to make com- 
mon schools a counterpoise to religious instruction at 
home and in Sabbath schools. The Board of Educa- 
tion in Massachusetts has aided in this work in two 
ways : (1) By allowing an individual, under the sanc- 
tion of its authority, to disseminate through the land 
crude and destructive principles, principles believed to 
be at war with the Bible and with the best interests 
of the young for time and eternity. (2) By a library 
which excludes books as sectarian that inculcate truths 
which nine-tenths of professed Christians of all names 
believe, while it accepts others that inculcate the 
most deadly heresy — even universal salvation."^ 

1 The following bibliography will throw light upon this contro- 
versy: (1) The Bible, the Rod, and Religion in Common Schools, 
pp. 59. This pamphlet contains Mr. Smith's sermon, " The Ark of 
God on a New Cart," a "Review " of the sermon by Wm. B. Fowle, 
a " Reply " to the " Review " by Mr. Smith, " Strictures on the Sec- 
tarian Character of The Common School Journal " by a member of 
the Board of Education, and "Correspondence " between Mr. Mann 
and Mr. Smith, embracing two letters from each disputant, (2) ;S't^- 
quel to the so-called Correspondence between Rev. M. H. Smith and 



222 HORACE MANN 

The fact that the moral condition of Boston was 
being canvassed at the time, among its incidents being 
a public meeting held at Faneuil Hall, gave a facti- 
tious importance to Mr. Smith's sermon. It was 
twice delivered to large audiences, and was published 
in pamphlet form as well as in a religious journal. 
It was a challenge that Mr. Mann felt called upon to 
meet. Only the salient features of the resulting con- 
troversy call for reproduction, and those only because 
they are an integral part of our subject. Mr. Mann 
contended : 

1. The Board had nothing whatever to do with the 
establishment or management of the common schools. 
These functions under the law rested first with the 
local authorities, but ultimately with the people, for 
the people elected the school committees in town 
meetings. If moral instruction was not given in the 
schools, or if the Bible was not read, the fault lay at 
the door of the school committees and of the people 
themselves. 

2. The attitude of the Board to the Bible may be 
best stated in Mr. Mann's own words : " The whole 
influence of the Board of Education, from the day of 
its organization to the present time, has been to pro- 
mote and encourage, and whenever they have had any 
power, as in the case of the Normal schools, to direct 
the daily use of the Bible in schools." " So efficient 
have been the efforts of the Board to get the Bible 

Horace Mann, by Mr. Mann, pp. 56. (3) Reply to the Sequel of 
Hon. Horace Mann, by Matthew Hale Smith, pp. 36. (4) Letter to 
the Rev. Matthew Hale Smith in answer to his Reply, by Horace 
Manu, pp. 22. (5) Horace Mann and M. Hale Smith, pp. 8. 



CONTROVERSY WITH RELIGIOUS SECTARIES 223 

into the common schools instead of out of them, as the 
report of Mr. Smith's sermon affirms, that, when I 
last made the inquiry, I found that the Bible was used 
in the schools in all the towns in the State excepting 
three ; and those three towns returned no answer to 
the inquiry. It might therefore be used in those 
three towns also.'' The Eighth Annual Eeport of the 
Board had contained an elaborate argument in favor 
of the use of the Bible. Mr. Mann declared: "The 
Bible was never so extensively used in our schools as 
at the present time ; and its use has been constantly 
increasing ever since the influence of the Board was 
brought to bear upon the subject." 

3. The Board had " never done anything to ' abolish 
the use of the rod in schools, or all correction but a little 
talk.' " On the contrary, it had '' always upheld and 
defended the use of the rod when other measures of 
restraint had been tried and failed." They went cord- 
ially, and, as he believed, unanimously, against those 
enormous abuses of the rod which had been per- 
petrated by incompetence and bad passions. " But on 
all occasions they had upheld the doctrine of author- 
ity and good order in school, and so much of punish- 
ment as, with other and higher influences, might be 
necessary to maintain them." 

4. The Board had not accepted as a part of the 
Common School Library books that inculcated "the 
most deadly heresy, even universal salvation." It 
had, rather, taken the greatest pains in its selection 
of books, and had accepted none until they had been 
unanimously approved by the Orthodox and liberal 
members of the Board alike. 



224 HORACE MANN 

In liis first letter, Mr. Mann entered a general 
denial of the charges that Mr. Smith had made, and 
called upon him either to withdraw them or to fur- 
nish adequate proof of their truth. It is almost 
needless to say that he did. neither. He did what 
the class of controversialists to which he belonged 
always do under similar circumstances — shifted his 
ground, made new charges, misrepresented documents, 
laid great emphasis on little things, appealed to sec- 
tarian prejudice, raised a great dust, and filled the 
air with noise and confusion. For his original charge 
that the Board had attempted to get the Bible out 
of the school, he substituted adroitly this proposi- 
tion : " You may introduce the Bible into every school 
in the State, yet if it goes in in any other light than 
the inspired word of God, etc., ... it ceases to be 
the Bible as Christians cherish it, its moral power is 
gone." When Mr. Mann protested that he too ac- 
cepted the Bible as the word of God, Mr. Smith re- 
torted that Mann did not believe the whole of it to be 
the inspired word, and that he did not think parts 
of it proper to be read in schools. In other words, 
the Secretary's own state of mind regarding the 
Bible, which Mr. Smith insisted upon defining for 
himself, in some way impaired the usefulness of the 
book even when read in the schools. In respect to 
the use of the rod, the trouble was somewhat the 
same. The Secretary justified its use in extreme 
cases, but on account of the incompetency of the 
master rather than of "the necessity that springs 
from the nature of the child." The meaning of this 
is that Mr. Mann did not favor whipping because 



CONTEOVERSY WITH RELIGIOUS SECTARIES 225 

Solomon recommended it, or because tlie cliild is a de- 
praved being, but because tlie teacher cannot wholly 
dispense with, it in maintaining order. In a word, 
Mr. Mann did not base his theory of school govern- 
ment on the dogma that men are by nature children 
of wrath, which Mr. Smith said was '-striking out 
with a dash of the pen a fundamental truth received 
by all Christian sects save one." Mr. Mann also pro- 
tested that he believed in future rewards and punish- 
ments ; but this was no more to the xmrpose than his 
protestation that he believed in the Bible and desired 
to have it read in the schools. Neither whipping nor 
Bible reading, apparently, could be expected to do 
any good so long as the Secretary entertained wrong 
theories about them. 

In this controversy Mr. Mann stood firmly, as he 
always did, for reading the Bible in the public schools, 
but without note or comment. This is a x^osition that 
is perfectly unassailable, save from two points of view. 
One of these is the Catholic doctrine that the Church 
is the fountain of all sound teaching in morals and in 
religion, and private judgment is a deadly error. The 
other is the thesis put forward by those persons who 
contend that the Bible itself is a sectarian book stand- 
ing on the same ground as the Koran or the Yedas. 

Towards the close of his "Sequel,'^ Mr. Mann ad- 
dressed some cogent considerations to those who 
thought that doctrinal religion should be taught in 
the schools, and who would impower each town or 
school district to determine the kind of doctrine to 
be taught. The passage has by no means lost its 
force from lapse of time. 

Q 



226 HORACE MANN 

"It is easy to see that the experiment would not 
stop with having half a dozen conflicting creeds taught 
by authority of law in the different schools of the 
same town or vicinity. Majorities will change in the 
same place. One sect may have the ascendency 
to-day, another to-morrow. This year there will 
be three Persons in the Godhead; next year but 
one ; and the third year the Trinity will be restored 
to hold its precarious sovereignty until it shall be 
again dethroned by the worms of the dust it has 
made. This year, the everlasting fires of hell will 
burn to terrify the impenitent ; next year, and with- 
out any repentance, its eternal flames will be extin- 
guished, to be rekindled forever, or to be quenched 
forever as it may be decided at annual town meetings. 
This year, under Congregational rule, the Rev. Mr. So 
and So, and the Rev. Dr. So and So will be on the com- 
mittee; but next year these reverends and reverend 
doctors will be plain misters, never having had 
apostolic consecration from the bishop. This year 
the ordinance of baptism is inefficacious without im- 
mersion ; next year one drop of water will be as good 
as forty fathoms. Children attending the district 
school will be taught one way; going from the dis- 
trict school to the town high school they will be 
taught another way. In controversies involving such 
momentous interests, the fiercest party spirit will 
rage, and all the contemplations of heaven be poi- 
soned by the passions of earth. Will not town lines 
and school district lines be altered, to restore an un- 
successful or to defeat a successful party ? Will not 
fiery zealots move from place to place, to turn the 



CONTKOVERSY WITH RELIGIOUS SECTARIES 227 

theological scale, as it is said is sometimes now 
done to turn a political one ? And will not the god- 
less make a merchandise of religion by being bribed 
to do the same thing ? Can aught be conceived more 
deplorable, more fatal to the interests of the young 
than this ? Such strifes and persecutions on the 
question of total depravity as to make all men de- 
praved at any rate; and such contests about the 
nature and the number of Persons in the Godhead in 
heaven, as to make little children atheists upon 
earth. 

^^ If the question, ^ What theology shall be taught in 
school ? ' is to be decided by districts or towns, then 
all the prudential and the superintending school com- 
mittees must be chosen with express reference to 
their faith; the creed of every candidate for teach- 
ing must be investigated ; and when litigations arise 
— and such a system will breed them in swarms — 
an ecclesiastical tribunal, some star chamber, or 
high commission court must be created to decide 
them. If the governor is to have power to appoint 
the judges of this spiritual tribunal, he also must 
be chosen with reference to the appointments he will 
make, and so, too, must the legislators who are to 
define their power, and to give them the purse and 
sword of the State, to execute their authority. Call 
such officers by the name of judge and governor, 
or cardinal and pope, the thing will be the same. 
The establishment of the true faith will not stop with 
the schoolroom. Its grasping jurisdiction will ex- 
tend over all schools, over all private faith and public 
worship, until at last, after all our centuries of 



228 HOKACE MANN 

struggle and of suffering, it will come back to the 
inquisition, the faggot, and the rack. 

" Let me ask here, too, where is the consistency of 
those who advocate the right of a town or a district 
to determine, by a majority, what theology shall be 
taught in the schools, but deny the same right to the 
State ? Does not this inconsistency blaze out into 
the faces of such advocates so as to make them feel, 
if they are too blind to see ? This would be true, 
even if the State had written out the theology it 
would enforce. But ours has not. It has only said 
that no one sect shall obtain any advantage over 
other sects by means of the school system, which, for 
purposes of self-preservation, it has established." 

Mr. Mann looked upon political strife much as he 
did upon sectarian zeal. "The wild roar of party 
politics" that filled the land in 1840 led him to 
reflect still more deeply than before upon the place 
of popular education among the factors and powers 
that form society and mould the individual. He dep- 
recated the fierce heat of party spirit, and pleaded for 
one institution which " should be sacred from the rav- 
ages of the spirit of party, one place in the wide land 
unblasted by the fiery breath of animosity." He saw 
how very injurious the great political storm that then 
passed over the country was to the educational inter- 
ests of Massachusetts. 

Again Mr. Mann's letters, particularly to George 
Combe, threw a sidelight upon the history. He 
wrote in July, 1844, that what he had said in the 
Seventh Re^^ort about the teaching of religion abroad 
had started up some of the fanatical people, who 



CONTROVERSY WITH RELIGIOUS SECTARIES 229 

tliouglit it necessary first to put liim down that they 
might afterwards carry out their plans of introducing 
religious doctrines into the schools. Instead of being 
convinced of their error in res^ject to compulsory 
religious teaching by the picture that he had drawn 
of Europe, the ultra-orthodox had asked the question 
why they could not have the same thing in Massachu- 
setts. In December of the same year he wrote that 
the Orthodox had been hunting him as though they 
had been bloodhounds and he a ^Door rabbit. The 
Orthodox could be divided into two classes : the Ortho- 
dox by association, education, or personal conviction ; 
and the born Orthodox, or those who, if they had had 
wit enough, would have invented Orthodoxy if Calvin 
had not done so. The last were the men who were 
assailing him. He had never seen a man of this class 
whom he would trust as long as he could hold his 
breath. 

It must not be supposed that Mr. Mann was left 
unsupported. On the contrary, he was thoroughly 
sustained, in the long run, by a majority of the Ortho- 
dox people of the State ; had he not been, he could 
never have held his ground. Governor Briggs en- 
dorsed him in one of his annual messages in these 
words : " Justice to a faithful public officer leads me 
to say that the indefatigable and accomplished Sec- 
retary of the Board of Education has performed ser- 
vices in the cause of common schools which will earn 
for him the lasting gratitude of the generation to 
which he belongs." Mr, ISTewton had no follower 
among the Orthodox members of the Board. On the 
other hand, the Eev. Emerson Davis, of Westfield, an 



230 HORACE MANN 

Orthodox clergyman and a member of the Board as it 
was first constituted by Governor Everett, defended 
Mr. Mann's course, and so did E-ev. Dr. Humphrey, 
who came into the Board at a later date. In a pub- 
lished communication Mr. Davis declared that the 
opposition, so far from being spontaneous, had been 
worked up by interested persons for purposes of their 
own.^ 

Prom one point of view a controversy with such 
a man as Eev. Matthew Hale Smith could end only 
in vanity and vexation of spirit. The spectacle of 
Horace Mann pursuing this slippery disputant through 
two or three pamphlets is little short of ludicrous. 
And yet Mr. Mann felt compelled to assume that duty 
because a point of educational policy transcendent in 
its importance was involved, and it would never do to 
allow it to be obscured, and still less to be answered 
wrongly. This was nothing less than the status that 
the State school should assume in respect to religion. 
How should the school be adjusted to the moral and 

1 How far Mr. Mann was from sectarian bias in respect to the 
schools is shown by this bit of history. Not long before he 
left the Secretary's office, a correspondent wrote him in regard to 
the employment of Roman Catholic teachers in the schools. His 
answer shows the breadth of view that he took of the whole sub- 
ject: "I do not see how, according to our law, a man is to be 
disfranchised or held to be disqualified for the office of a teacher, 
merely because he is a Catholic. If his manners and his attainments 
are good, if his conduct is exemplary, his character pure, and he 
has ability to inculcate justice, a sacred regard to truth, the prin- 
ciples of piety, and those other excellencies which the constitution 
enumerates, can you reject him because you understand him to be 
a Catholic? Would Pere la Salle, Fenelon, or Bishop Cheverus be 
disqualified by the fact of their faith alone to keep a school in 
Massachusetts? " 



CONTROVERSY WITH RELIGIOUS SECTARIES 231 

religious training of children ? Counsels far more 
dangerous than those given out by the Rev. Matthew 
Hale Smith were being poured into the ears of the 
public. For example The Princeton Review did not 
hesitate to say: ^'The people of each school dis- 
trict have the right to make the schools as religious as 
they please; and if they cannot agree they have the 
right severally of withdrawing their proper propor- 
tion of the public stock of funds." The Recorder had 
declared that "the grand doctrines of the gospel 
must be regularly and clearly taught." Moreover, a 
prominent contributor to the same journal, speaking 
of the framers of the law which declared that the 
school committee should never direct to be used in 
any of the town schools any school books which were 
calculated to favor the tenets of any particular sect 
of Christians, said: "If their object was to exclude 
books which teach the leading doctrines of Protes- 
tantism, or, to be more definite, the leading doctrines 
held by the Pilgrim Fathers of New England, or, to 
be more definite still, the prominent truths embraced 
by the evangelical churches of Massachusetts, then 
it is no matter how soon the law is repealed." The 
same writer asserted that in such things the majority 
must govern. It must be conceded that he was con- 
sistent, for he accorded the same right to an Universal- 
ist. Orthodox, or evangelical majority indifferently. 

Something has been lost, no doubt, by differentiat- 
ing so closely the various controversies in which Mr. 
Mann was engaged. They are made to appear more 
separate and disconnected than they really were. As 
a matter of fact, they were but phases of one general 



232 HORACE MANN 

current of opposition to the new educational move- 
ment. On the other hand, the sources of opposition 
and the dangers that they threatened are much more 
clearly brought out by the method that has been 
pursued. This is especially true of the sectarian 
controversy, which was the most serious of all. The 
hostility of Massachusetts politicians and Boston 
schoolmasters was local and did not, perhaps, bode 
permanent danger to the cause; but the sectarian 
issue was fundamental and universal. Here Mr. 
Mann was fighting the battle, not of Massachusetts 
alone but of the whole country. He stood for Amer- 
ica. He contended for the principle on which alone, 
under existing conditions, it was possible to build up 
a general system of common schools. This was the 
principle that sectarian instruction, as the term was 
then understood, should be excluded from the school- 
houses. Whether the Bible itself is a sectarian 
book, is a question that had not then arisen and with 
which Mr. Mann was not called upon to deal. For 
no service that he rendered is he entitled to larger 
gratitude than for the clear insight with which he 
chose his ground and the great ability and unfalter- 
ing courage with which he defended it. Had he 
stood for excluding the Bible from the schools, on 
the one hand, or for expounding it according to the 
creeds on the other, he would have inflicted a serious, 
if not an irreparable, injury upon the cause. If the 
doctrine for which his opponents contended had pre- 
vailed in Massachusetts and other States, there would 
be to-day no public school system in the country 
worthy of the name. 



CHAPTER X 

MR. MANN A MEMBER OF CONGRESS 

On February 23, 1848, Jolm Quincy Adanis died in 
the Speaker's room of the House of Eepresentatives 
at Washington. He had long been the leader in 
Congress of the opposition to the spread of slavery 
in the country, as well as the Nestor of the House 
of Representatives, and his death, notwithstanding 
his great age, was a matter of National concern. 
Much would turn upon the selection of his successor. 
The people of Mr. Adams' district, who looked upon 
the crisis as an important one, finally fixed their eyes 
upon Mr. Mann, who had recently made his home at 
West Newton, as the fittest person for the succession, 
and they accordingly nominated him. At first, he 
peremptorily declined the nomination, but, yielding 
to the importunities of friends, he reversed his de- 
cision and accepted it. His election took place in 
March, and in April, 1848, Mr. Mann transferred the 
scene of his labors from Massachusetts to Washing- 
ton. He resigned his Secretaryship, but consented, 
the Board of Education not being ready to appoint 
his successor, to retain it until the close of the year. 
This he was the more willing to do as it gave him 
an opportunity to make a final report, " a peroration 
to the rest." He was twice re-elected, and served 

233 



234 HORACE MANN 

from April, 1848, to March, 1853, five years that were 
full of eventful histor}^ Possibly the most interest- 
ing part of the slight account of his period of service 
that can be given in this work will be the reasons that 
led Mr. Mann to make the change. 

Mrs. Mann says he saw that the new office had 
bearings upon education which allied it closely to 
his interests. The Secretaryship was becoming, or 
rather had become, very onerous to him, while he 
desired to take an active part in the great contro- 
versy over slavery, that more and more filled the land 
down to the Civil War. In two letters to George 
Combe, which bear the dates April 12, 1849, and 
November 15, 1850, Mr. Mann says his most decisive 
reason was regard for his health. He verily believed 
that another year without aid and without relaxation 
would have closed his labors upon earth. He was in 
the twelfth year of his Secretaryship, and while acting 
in that capacity he was under the trammels of neu- 
trality between all sects and parties. Longer silence 
on some pending questions was becoming almost un- 
bearable to him. Touching slavery, he said that the 
destiny of a new territory of about six hnndred thou- 
sand square miles in extent was about to be deter- 
mined; while all of human history that he ever knew 
respecting the contest for political and religious free- 
dom, and his own hard struggle to imbue the public 
mind with an understanding of the spirit of religious 
liberty, had so magnified in his mind the importance 
of free institutions, and so intensified his horror of 
all forms of slavery, that even the importance of 
education itself seemed for a moment to be eclipsed. 



MR. MANN A MEMBER OE CONGRESS 235 

Still further, Ms fidelity to his principles had raised 
up some enemies, who, to thwart him, would resist 
educational progress, but who, if he were out of the 
way, would be disarmed and would co-operate with his 
successor. 

If Mr. Mann really cherished the hope of accom- 
plishing something in Congress for education, he must 
have been keenly disappointed. There have been few 
occasions when a statesman in Congress, no matter 
what his character, interest, or standing, could directly 
do much to forward the cause of education, and one 
of these occasions did not fall within Mr. Mann's 
period of service. Other and more engrossing sub- 
jects occupied the public mind, while the theory of 
the Government that was then in vogue was not favor- 
able to such measures. But disappointed as he may 
have been, Mr. Mann constantly showed his interest 
in the cause that he had so faithfully served. Soon 
after he took his seat in the House, he delivered an 
able speech entitled " Slavery and the Territories," in 
which he spoke with much eloquence of the opposite 
effects of freedom and slavery on popular education, 
of the relation of such education to labor and inven- 
tion, and of the effect that the association of young 
children with slaves produced upon Southern man- 
ners. In Congress Mr. Mann still cultivated all his 
old enthusiasms, as for temperance and moral reforms 
in general. He took an active interest in Miss Doro- 
thea Dix's efforts to better the condition of the insane 
in the District of Columbia. The scholar, also, is 
pleased to find him supporting a more liberal appro- 
priation for carrying into effect the law in regard to 



236 HORACE MANN 

the international exchange of books. He naturally 
took a keen interest in the visit of the Hungarian 
patriot Kossuth to the United States, which occurred 
towards the close of his period of Congressional ser- 
vice. Soon after he went to Washington, Mr. Mann 
appeared as counsel in some cases at law that pro- 
duced, at the time, widespread interest and some ex- 
citement. Yielding to the importunity of antislavery 
men at the North, he undertook the defence of Dray- 
ton and Sayers, charged with attempting to abduct 
seventy slaves from Washington in the sloop " Pearl.'' 
E-eal political interest had first awakened in Mr. 
Mann's mind in the Era of Good Feeling, and his first 
active participation in politics was the support that 
he gave to John Quincy Adams in the presidential 
election of 1824. Afterwards he became a National 
Eepublican, and then a Whig. When the slavery agi- 
tation grew sharp, it began to affect political parties. 
At first, most of the antislavery men who took a part 
in practical politics acted within the lines of one or 
the other of the two old parties ; but, as time went on, 
they were more and more driven, or more and more 
drawn, to form an organization of their own. This 
was the case in Massachusetts as well as in many 
other of the Northern States. Mr. Mann entered 
Congress as an antislavery Whig, but, before he left 
it, he had become a member of the coalition of anti- 
slavery Whigs and Democrats that was sometimes 
known as the Free Soilers or the Free Democracy? 
and that formed the nucleus of the Eepublican party 
of the future. But while a strong antislavery man, 
Mr. Mann deprecated the ideas and the action of the 



MR. MAXN A iMEMBER OF CONGRESS 237 

extremists, as he regarded tliem, on the same side. 
Not only was he no Abolitionist, but he frequently 
criticised the Free Soilers as well. It will be seen, 
therefore, that Mr. Mann was at no time a political 
extremist. He never took more than a secondary 
interest in merely partisan questions, and it was the 
moral factors involved that enlisted his determined 
opposition to slavery. As a politician he acted on the 
principle of securing the best thing that he thought 
attainable at the time and place. He naturally fell 
under the condemnation of the Abolitionists. Not 
long before he left Massachusetts for Ohio, he became 
involved in a controversy with Wendell Phillips on 
the question whether, since the National Constitution 
recognizes slavery, moral and Christian men could 
rightly hold- office under our General and State gov- 
ernments. To enter into this question, or to inquire 
where the truth lay between Mr. Mann and Mr. 
Phillips, is altogether foreign to the purpose of this 
work. 

It will be seen that Mr. Mann's period of Congres- 
sional service coincided with the discussion and imme- 
diate settlement of the exciting question that grew 
out of the Mexican War. It was the day of the 
famous Compromise Measures. He entered into the 
discussion of these questions with the greatest courage 
and ardor, opposing the strongest possible resistance 
to the extension of slavery and the enactment of the 
Fugitive Slave Law. Every leading speech that he 
made in the House of Eepresentatives, five in all, was 
devoted to the slavery question. The fact that a 
man of his wide range of interests and sympathies 



238 HORACE MANN 

should talk on slavery, and nothing but slavery, 
shows how that issue then dominated the mind of the 
country. These speeches are marked by great force 
of argument, telling illustration, and fervid patriotic 
and moral appeal. They were listened to with the 
more respect and commanded the wider audience 
from the fact that everybody knew that Mr. Mann 
was not a politician, in the accepted sense of the 
word, and that he uttered nothing but the sincere 
convictions of his heart. At the time of their deliv- 
ery, his speeches were considered among the ablest of 
their kind, and history has confirmed this opinion. 
Mr. Mann was a great admirer of Daniel Webster, 
and shared fully in the general disappointment that 
was caused by that statesman's Seventh of March 
Speech. He said the speech bore all the marks of 
Webster's mind — " clearness of style, weight of state- 
ment, power of language; but nothing can, to my 
mind, atone for the abandonment of the Territories to 
what he calls the law of Kature for the exclusion of 
slavery." After pointing out that much of Delaware, 
Virginia, Kentucky, and Missouri lay far north of 
a great part of New Mexico, he demanded : " How 
can a man say that a law of Nature will keep slavery 
out of the latter when it has not kept it out of the 
former ? " He then expressed an opinion that was in 
full accord with his habitual mode of thinking. " The 
existence or non-existence of slavery depends more 
upon conscience than climate." He ever after re- 
garded Mr. Webster as a fallen star, and applied to 
him the words, " Lucifer descending from heaven." 
Invited by some of his constituents to address them 



ME. MANN A MEMBER OF CONGRESS 239 

in a public speech., lie wrote them a letter instead, in 
which he reviewed the course of leading statesmen on 
the slavery question. He pointed out, as he said, 
Mr. Webster's inconsistencies and enormities in as 
searching a manner as lie could, but in a very respect- 
ful tone. This was enough ; naturally Webster and 
his friends strove to prevent Mr. Mann's return to 
Congress in 1850. The Whigs refused to renominate 
him and nearly all the Whig newspapers opposed 
him, but he came out as an independent candidate, 
and made his appeal to the people direct. As he 
himself told the story to Combe : " The convention to 
nominate my successor was packed by fraudulent 
means and I was thrown overboard. ... To bring 
the odium theologicum to crush me, an evangelical was 
taken as my opponent. I took the stump and put the 
matter to my constituents face to face." He was re- 
elected by a handsome majority. This triumph, 
which had both a personal and a political character, 
afforded Mr. Mann and his friends the greatest pleas- 
ure. The election had been preceded by a personal 
controversy between Mann and Webster that at the 
time attracted widespread attention.^ 

In September, 1852, the antislavery coalition referred 
to above — the same coalition that first sent Charles 
Sumner to the United States Senate — nominated Mr. 

1 Mann's political controversies were marked by the same heat 
and intensity that he manifested in dealing with the Boston school- 
masters and the religious sectaries who opposed him. Mr. E. L. 
Pierce, dealing with his attack on Mr. Webster, remarks : " Mann's 
argument was one of great ability, but impaired in its effect by 
intensives and personalities." — Memoir and Letters of Charles 
Sumner, Vol. III., p. 210. 



240 HORACE MANN 

Mann for Governor of Massachusetts. When the 
returns came in he was found to stand at the bottom 
of the poll. His own comment was, " Eum and pro- 
slavery have done it." Some glowing eulogies on his 
life, character, and public services were delivered in 
the convention that placed him in nomination. Mr. 
Seth Webb said Mr. Mann, if elected, would see to 
it that no second Thomas Simms was carried from 
Boston into slavery. Hon. Henry Wilson, afterwards 
Vice-President, characterized a recent speech of Mann's 
as one of the most brilliant speeches for liberty that 
ever fell from human lips in our own or any other 
country. In the struggles of the future it would exert 
an influence perhaps unequalled by any speech of the 
time. Still more pertinent to the purpose of the pres- 
ent volume is the following paragraph from the speech 
delivered by Hon. Anson Burlingame : 

"As to the candidate we have nominated, I shall 
say nothing but that his fame is as wide as the 
universe. It was my fortune to be, some time since, 
in Guildhall, London, when a debate was going on. 
The question was whether they should instruct their 
representatives in favor of secular education. They 
voted that they would not do it. But a gentleman 
then rose and read- some statistics from one of the 
Beports of the Hon. Horace Mann. That extract 
reversed the vote of the Common Council of London. 
I have never felt prouder of my country. I call upon 
the young men of the Commonwealth, who have 
grown up under the inspiration of his free schools, 
to sustain their champion, and to carry his name over 
the hills and through the pleasant valleys of Massachu- 



MR. MANN A MEMBER OF CONGRESS 241 

setts during the present canvass with that enthusiasm 
which shall result in a glorious victory." 

With his canvass for the governorship of Massa- 
chusetts, Mr. Mann's active participation in politics 
terminated, but his interest in the slavery question 
never waned. There can be little doubt that his 
political services while in the House of Eepresenta- 
tives would have received larger recognition than has 
been accorded to them if they had not been so over- 
shadowed by his educational career. 



CHAPTER XI 

HORACE MANN PRESIDENT OF ANTIOCH COLLEGE 

The most painful period in Mr. Mann's public life, 
and in some ways the most interesting, is tlie last 
period, the six years that he served as president of 
Antioch College. The story is indeed a pathetic one, 
almost a tragedy. It is a story that tells many 
lessons, but, unfortunately, some of the most im- 
pressive of them are lessons of warning rather than 
of encouragement. The character of this work limits 
us to a brief treatment of the subject. 

In October, 1850, the Christian Connection took 
preliminary steps looking to the founding of a col- 
lege, their principal aims being two in number: to 
establish a non-sectarian college of high rank, and to 
offer in it equal opportunities for students of both 
sexes. The Articles of Incorporation defined the 
Christian Connection to be a religious denomination, 
professing no creed but the Bible, and having no test 
of fellowship but Christian character. The Articles 
also determined the name and style of the institution, 
which were suggested by the well-known words of 
Acts xi. 26: "And the disciples were called Chris- 
tians first in Antioch." Financial considerations ex- 
clusively gave the college to Ohio, and were also 
weighty in fixing its seat. This was at Yellow 
242 



PRESIDENT OF ANTIOCH COLLEGE 243 

Springs, a small village in Greene County, about 
seventy-five miles northeast of Cincinnati. The lib- 
eral contributions promised by citizens of the locality 
were reinforced by its natural attractions. The ]3lace 
was a favorite resort for invalids and persons seeking 
rest and quiet, who were drawn to the spot by the 
delightful scenery and the medicinal qualities of the 
spring from which the place took its name. But, 
most unhap]Dily, neither scenery nor spring afforded 
quiet and rest to the much worn man who was called 
to preside over the new seat of learning. 

It was no way strange that the founders of Antioch 
College should seek Horace Mann for a president. 
The strange thing was, as many thought at the time^ 
and as some will still think, that he was even willing 
to consider the proposition, much less to accept it. In 
the first place, it is hard to imagine a more insecure 
financial foundation than the one that the fathers of 
Antioch provided, or a more unbusiness-like financial 
management. The mainstay of the College was to be 
a system of scholarships, perpetual in character and 
transf errible by delivery, which were to be sold for the 
pitiful price of one hundred dollars each. In the next 
place the phrases " liberal Christian " and " non-sec- 
tarian," while alluring to many minds, have often 
proved extremely delusive. There is nothing in hu- 
man experience that guarantees catholicity of feel- 
ing and breadth of view to men who assume these 
badges, or to religious bodies that have no creed but 
the Bible and no test of church fellowship but Chris- 
tian character. The history of Antioch was soon to 
show in what widely different senses these phrases 



244 HORACE MANN 

were understood by those who participated in the Col- 
lege movement. Again, while the Christian Connec- 
tion was no doubt composed of very worthy people, 
there was nothing in the antecedents of the body, or in 
its make-up in respect to culture, social status, and the 
like, that prepared it to found and to nourish an insti- 
tution of higher learning that should be really liberal 
or non-sectarian in spirit. And finally the environ- 
ment of the College did not promise fit opportunity to 
realize, at least immediately, large ideas of education. 
It requires much knowledge of the facts, and much 
imagination besides, to picture the differences in wealth, 
education, traditions, and social cultivation existing 
between the society in which Mr, Mann had moved in 
Massachusetts and the society into which he came in 
1853 in southwestern Ohio. The contrast is suggested, 
and perhaps other things as well, by two sentences 
that may be quoted from a letter written by Mr. Mann 
after his acceptance of the presidency. "Miss Beecher 
prays, if I want any more comfort in this life, that I 
will not try to build up a college at the West, and 
says Mr. Stowe held up his hands in deprecation at 
the thought. So you see what persons who linow 
about things think our prospect will be." Catherine 
Beecher and Calvin E. Stowe had had some experience 
in Cincinnati. It may be added that, in 1853, as now, 
the State of Ohio contained many more colleges than 
it could properly sustain, or than Avere needed for the 
training of those seeking higher education. 

But it is time to turn the shield about. Mr. Mann 
had no doubt become weary of Congressional life ; 
he was not in accord with the political forces that for 



PEESIDENT OF ANTIOCH COLLEGE 245 

tlie time were uppermost in Massacliusetts, and the 
result of the gubernatorial election did not indicate 
that a political future lay before him in the East. 
On the other hand, he was strongly drawn to the 
work of education, and saw in Antioch College an 
opportunity to put to the test some long-cherished 
educational ideas. The two main features of the plan 
were particularly attractive to him : that of " redress- 
ing the long-inflicted wrongs of woman by giving her 
equal advantages of education," and of showing his 
deep aversion to sectarianism and to all systems of 
proselytism among Christian sects. He said plainly 
that if he went to Antioch he should introduce women 
as well as men into the faculty, not only because he 
thought they made as good teachers as men, but be- 
cause the young ladies needed maternal as well as 
paternal counsel and advice. He was also attracted, 
it is said, by the sympathy and enthusiastic support 
that the founders of the College tendered him. And 
finally, Mr. Mann preferred to bring up his children 
in the West, where society was more free and less 
conventional than in the East. 

How far Mr. Mann understood beforehand the 
enterprise in which he embarked the remnant of his 
life, is mainly a matter of conjecture. It is not im- 
probable that the very things which another would 
have considered fatal objections to accepting the 
presidency, were to him the strongest reasons for 
accepting it. If the Christian Connection were not 
as liberal and cultivated as they might be, there was 
the greater opportunity and need to liberalize and cul- 
tivate them. If the West was somewhat raw, the 



246 HORACE MANN 

more pressing the need of cultivation. If conventions 
were not firmly established, if mind, manners, and 
morals were in a formative state, tradition wo aid lie 
less heavily upon the new enterprise, and it would be 
all the easier to build from the foundation. It is per- 
fectly certain that he fully appreciated the boundless 
possibilities of the Mississippi Valley, both material 
and spiritual, and that he realized the need of that 
forming and renovating agent which to him was the 
pledge of everything that is worth having in human 
life. In his address of investiture of office, he said: 
" Wherever the capital of the United States may be, 
this valley will be its seat of empire. No other 
valley — the Danube, the Ganges, the Nile, or the 
Amazon — is ever to exert so formative an influence 
as this upon the destinies of men ; and, therefore, in 
civil polity, in ethics, in studying and obeying the 
laws of God, it must ascend to the contemplation of a 
future and enduring reign of beneficence and peace." 
The perils of the Western country, however, were on 
an equal scale of grandeur with its powers. The 
West was increasing in wealth beyond all precedent, 
in ancient or modern times. " Without the refining 
influences of education, wealth grows coarse in its 
manners, beast-like in its pleasures, vulgar and wicked 
in its ambition. Without the liberalizing and up- 
lifting power of education, wealth grows overweening 
in its vanity, cruel in its pride, and contemptible 
in its ignorance. Without the Christian element in 
education, wealth grows selfish in the domestic circle, 
tyrannical in the State, benighted and bigoted in the 
Church, everywhere impious towards God. If a poor 



PRESIDENT OF ANTIOCH COLLEGE 247 

country needs education because tliat is its only re- 
source for changing sterility into exuberance, a rich, 
country needs it none the less because it is the only 
thing which can chasten the proud passions of man 
into humility, or make any other gift of God a 
blessing." 

Thus did his mind image the possibility, the need, 
and the opportunity. As to the financial side of the 
subject, two things may be said: one is that the 
scholarship plan was alluring and had not then been 
thoroughly tried ; the other, that Mr. Mann was con- 
stitutionally incapable of weighing pecuniary matters 
or interests when they related to himself. Eor ex- 
ample, when he learned that the Board would not 
be able to pay him the salary that had been first 
mentioned, he merely said the moral side of the 
question had gone up more^ than the pecuniary side 
had gone down. And so the die was cast. Mr. 
Mann was much in the habit of referring his actions 
to his Causality, but it is perfectly evident that in this 
instance he rather took counsel of his Hope. There 
is, then, no necessary mystery surrounding the ques- 
tion: Horace Mann went to Antioch for the same 
reason that he had accepted the Secretaryship in 
1837, and had gone to Congress in 1848. 

Antioch College opened her doors to the world in 
September, 1853. President Mann delivered an in- 
augural address that, at the time, attracted much 
attention throughout the country. In the opening 
paragraph he dedicated Antioch College to the two 
great objects which can never be rightly separated 
from each other — The Honor of God and the Service 



248 HORACE MANN 

of Man. This is the keynote of all that follows. 
He shows that man — the race — was not created for 
narrow bounds of time, but for wide ones, and is 
indefinitely perfectible. He asks what youth need 
in order to become ministers of good to the world, 
and devotes the principal part of his address to 
answering this question. His answer is summed up 
in the following paragraph : 

" I have now, my friends, sketched the great neces- 
sities of a race like ours, in a world like ours. A 
body grown from its elemental beginning in health; 
compacted with strength and vital with activity in 
every part ; impassive to heat and cold, and victori- 
ous over the vicissitudes of seasons and zones; not 
crippled by disease nor stricken down by early death ; 
not shrinking from bravest effort, but panting, like 
fleetest runner, less for the prize than for the joy of 
the race ; and rejuvenant amid the frosts of age. A 
mind as strong for the immortal as is the body for 
the mortal life ; alike enlightened by the wisdom and 
beaconed by the errors of the past; through intelli- 
gence of the laws of Nature, guiding her elemental 
forces, as it directs the limbs of its own body through 
the nerves of motion, thus making alliance with the 
exhaustless forces of Nature for its strength and 
clothing itself with her endless charms for its beauty, 
and, wherever it goes, carrying a sun in its hand with 
which to explore the realms of Nature and reveal her 
yet hidden truths. And then a moral nature, presid- 
ing like a divinity over the whole, banishing sorrow 
and pain, gathering in earthly joys and immortal 
hopes, and transfigured and rapt by the sovereign 



PEESIDENT OF ANTIOCH COLLEGE 249 

and sublime aspiration to know and do the will of 
God." 

This discourse is perhaps the most elaborate and 
finished of all its author's educational addresses.^ It 
has all the qualities of his mind. It is affluent in 
ideaSj rhetorical in construction and diction, diffuse 
in language and illustration. It is widely removed 
in character from the conventional college president's 
inaugural address. It hardly touches the questions 
that most interest college instructors and adminis- 
trators to-day. Whether the humanities, the mathe- 
matics, or the sciences make the best discipline ; how 
the several groups of studies should be compounded 
in the curriculum ; the relations of specialization and 
general culture; the college ideal separate and apart 
from the life ideal ; investigation and research as in- 
struments of teaching ; whether the college instructor 
should be an investigator, and should lead his pupils 
to become such — these questions are not so much as 
noted. Much insistence is indeed placed upon the 
study of science, but this is general insistence, resting 
upon the old Baconian ideas that man can command 
Nature only by obeying her, and that knowledge is 
power. It is quite true that some of the questions 
just mentioned have come to the front since that 

1 This address, together with "The Demands of the Age on Col- 
leges," and three baccalaureate addresses, and the Eeport on the 
" Code of Honor," may be called " Mr. Mann's Manual of College 
Education." In the second of these addresses he said the demand 
of college professors for more time, for another year, could be easily 
met, if only college students would observe the laws of their being. 
" Their present four years would become equivalent to five years, 
and every teacher knows that the fifth or additional year would 
be worth either two of the others." 



250 HORACE MANN 

day, and tliat the face of higher education has much 
changed ; but Horace Mann would not to-day, if alive, 
Avrite an inaugural address that Avas very different from 
the one that he wrote in 1853 ; he would still connect 
education and character, and find the best test of the 
value of a college in the extent to which it fits young 
men and women for the practical duties of life. In- 
genuit}^ in deciphering an old text, or skill in the use 
of a test-tube he would hold quite subordinate to gen- 
eral cultivation and sound character. He would still 
pass by the technical questions of the teaching art to 
grapple with the great issues of life and destiny. Per- 
haps the very best characterization of the address 
would be "a splendid lay sermon on human cultiva- 
tion." Eev. T. Starr King said it contained vitality 
enough to make a college thrive in the Sahara desert, 
and the reader would like to know the details of 
the diet that flooded the brain with such, impetuous 
electricity for the service of truth, making the sen- 
tences tingle the eye when they were read. 

While it is not proposed to subject this address to 
formal criticism, it will not be superfluous to point out 
that Mr. Mann emphasizes a mistake that is as old as 
Socrates. He does not, indeed, hold that knowledge 
and virtue are identical, but he overstates the close- 
ness of the relationship between them. His own life 
was a constant refutation of his theory relative to the 
connection of teaching and conduct ; he knew what he 
aud his friend Combe were fond of calling "the laws," 
and was continually preaching them to others, and as 
constantly violating them, or at least the laws of 
health, himself, thus proving that the active princi- 



PRESIDENT OF ANTIOCH COLLEGE 251 

pies of human nature, as the desires and feelings, often 
override the intelligence. There is, indeed, but one 
ground on which his whole life at Yellow Springs can 
be defended, and that is an absolute denial of his postu- 
late that the laws of the body are just as much moral 
laws and are to be as implicitly obeyed as the laws of 
the soul. If the old Greek conception of balance really 
involves either the assumption that man's three 
natures are equal, or the denial of the superiority of 
the spirit, then there is nothing for it but to reject 
that conception. 

But it is time to look more closely into matters with 
a view of discovering the characteristic features of 
Antioch College. 

The early College publications assume standards for 
admission and for graduation equal to those existing 
at the time in the older colleges of the East. Elective 
studies were offered to the student in every year but 
the last one. Of all the seniors, the same studies, 
which were mainly of a philosophical and historical 
character, were required. An alternative course with- 
out Greek or Latin led to the degree of Bachelor of 
Arts. Scientific and historical studies held a much 
more prominent place than in the traditionary curric- 
ulum of the day. Physiology and hygiene were 
introduced, it has been said for the first time, into 
the college course. The laws of physical well-being 
were taught to all students. Another feature is even 
more novel. "The study of the theory and practice 
of teaching," the official history runs, "was made a 
part of the regular course, thus incorporating the 
work of preparing young persons to teach in the very 



252 HOKACE MANN 

organization of tlie college." This was the reproduc- 
tion, under new conditions, of the Normal school idea. 
The study was, however, elective. It is not known 
that the professional training of teachers was intro- 
duced into another American college imtil a quarter 
of a century later. As to methods of teaching, the 
excessive use of text-books was discouraged, and oral 
instruction made a permanent feature. An early cir- 
cular that Mr. Mann prepared compared teaching from 
books alone to administering the same prescription to 
all the patients in a hospital, while oral instruction 
was mingling the cup of healing for each individual 
case. 

The reader will see Mr. Mann's old and favorite 
ideas continually cropping out in this description. On 
coming to a college presidency, he strove to introduce 
some of the same reforms that he had advocated for 
common schools, particularly the modernized course of 
study and more fruitful teaching. His eulogy on 
oral method has the ring of the controversy with the 
Boston schoolmasters. 

Antioch College was coeducational. In 1853 Ober- 
lin was the only college in the country that admitted 
women to its halls ; and even at Oberlin most of the 
women took a course that was two years shorter than 
the regular one. It was then ingrained in the public 
mind that women had no real need of the higher edu- 
cation, and that they had not the ability to acquire it. 
Within the walls of Antioch, women met men as stu- 
dents on an equal footing. President Mann did not 
necessarily believe, he said, in an identical education 
for men and women, but he did believe in an equal 



PKESIDENT OF ANTIOCH COLLEGE 253 

one ; lie was accustomed to call coeducation " our 
great experiment " ; moreover, lie did not accept cer- 
tain views of woman's sphere tliat have since become 
far more current than they were in his time. Woman 
should be educated as woman, he held; she should 
not attempt to wear whiskers or sing bass. 

Antioch was a pioneer in another cause. Next to 
Oberlin she was the first college in the country in 
refusing to discriminate against persons of color. 

Mr. Mann, when he became a college president, did 
not abandon his former convictions about incentives 
to study and good conduct. It is claimed, apparently 
on good authority, that Antioch was the first college 
in the country to discard honors and prizes. The 
president declined to receive for its intended purpose 
a sum of money that a friend in Boston had sent him 
to be used in some such way. He relied upon the 
love of knowledge and the natural advantages which 
its possession conferred. This was enough; he had 
had occasion to use the curb quite as often as the spur. 
He held it indisputable that all normal children love 
knowledge as surely as they love honey, but they 
would not thrust their hands into a live bee-hive to 
get the honey, or enjoy it if it were poured into their 
ears. 

But it was in the sphere of discipline and moral 
training that the most notable results were achieved 
at Antioch. Mr. Mann brought to the college a the- 
ory of moral education fully wrought out and fully 
in accord with his philosophy of human nature, and 
this theory he now had an opportunity to put into 
practice. This theory was the same substantially 



254 HORACE MANN 

that he had urged so eloquently upon the teachers of 
common schools. That the results proved his theory 
to be true in a general or abstract sense, no competent 
person will hold; that it proved eminently successful 
in his handsj no one acquainted with the facts will 
venture to deny. Holding the loftiest moral ideal, 
sympathetic and appreciative, full of moral enthusi- 
asm, highly gifted with powers of persuasion, and 
enforcing his lofty ideal by his own lofty life, he 
easily acquired an unusual moral influence over young 
persons. He looked upon the wayward student as a 
lost sheep, to be followed into the wilderness, rescued, 
and brought home on the shoulders of the rejoicing 
shepherd. Horace Mann is a conspicuous example 
of one in whom a purely ethical religion produced, or 
at least accompanied, an intensity of nature that has 
commonly been associated with a different faith. 

Mr. Mann held that a college diploma should be 
a certificate of character as well as of scholarship, 
and, so holding, he always refused graduation to im- 
moral students. The phrases "good morals" and 
" good character " are no doubt often lightly used, but 
he always attached to them a high significance. One 
writer, fully conversant with the facts, says that Presi- 
dent Mann strove to make the acquaintance and gain 
the confidence of every student, and to impart to him 
his own inspiration to live for the highest ends. The 
health and morals of the students were his special 
care, and publicly and privately he labored to guard 
and protect them. The earnestness and power of his 
words, his pathos, wit, and occasional sarcasms, would 
never be forgotten by any who were his pupils. In 



PRESIDENT OF ANTIOCH COLLEGE 255 

discipline, his aim was to check the beginnings of dis- 
order. He was firm and thorough, but ready to accept 
any hope of amendment. In the relations of the two 
sexes, his aim was by public occupations and other- 
wise, to give frequent opportunity for social inter- 
course in the presence of teachers and friends, that 
it might be the easier to restrain any tendency to 
seek private interviews. The lament of Jacob that 
he once applied to parents about to send their chil- 
dren to college, "If I be bereaved of my children, 
I am bereaved," well describes his solicitude for his 
students. In pleading with the wayward he often 
shed tears. His steady reliance upon his students, 
and especially upon his Senior class, as conservators 
of good morals, reminds us of the similar reliance of 
Arnold of Rugby upon the Sixth Form. He felt strong 
in his young battalions. He trusted the students, and 
they responded to his trust. When Dr. Hill was 
offered the presidency of Antioch, as Mr. Mann's suc- 
cessor, the remark was made to him that he would 
not be required to carry out the Utopian ideas that 
his predecessor had exemplified in his code of honor. 
Dr. Hill replied that this code of honor was the special 
feature of the College situation which made him wish 
to be Mann's successor. Attendance upon the chapel 
exercises and church, while encouraged, was not re- 
quired of those students who had scruples of con- 
science. The use of tobacco was forbidden. 

Besides conducting the administration, President 
Mann was one of the College teachers. It gives a 
gauge of Antioch College to say that his studies were 
Political Economy, Intellectual Philosophy, Moral 



256 HORACE MANN 

Philosophy, and Natural Theology. He taught a 
weekly Bible class, that he and others regarded as 
a great source of intellectual and moral power. He 
became a preacher, and delivered frequent sermons 
in the College chapel and village church. And at 
last he was compelled to become the financial mana- 
ger of the College. 

What he accomplished at Antioch was by no means 
all the educational work that Mr. Mann did for the 
West during those six eventful years. He was fre- 
quently on the lecture platform, with education or 
some related subject for a theme. He was active in 
educational meetings in Ohio, and often visited other 
States to promote educational interests. He was the 
chairman of a commission of three appointed by the 
Governor of Iowa to revise the laws of the State 
relating to schools and school lands, but he did no 
more than to sign the report, which was sent him 
in manuscript. Still there is a tradition that he 
opposed dividing the townships of the State into sub- 
districts, and contended for the township system. 
Mr. Mann also contributed to educational journals, 
and was the trusted adviser of educators in many 
places. Thus, when the Eegents of the University 
of Michigan in 1856 were seeking advice relative to 
coeducation, they wrote to Horace Mann. 

An appreciative pupil thus describes President 
Mann as a teacher in the classroom : 

" His mode of teaching was suggestive and stimulat- 
ing, not so holding his flock to the dusty, travel-worn 
path as to forbid their free access to every inviting 
meadow or spring by the way. It was his wont to 



PRESIDENT OF ANTIOCH COLLEGE 257 

hear us recite a few hours each week, assigning special 
lessons to special pupils, giving each some question, 
some theory, some matter-of-fact inquiry on which each 
could pursue investigations at leisure, and prepare a 
paper to be read before the whole class, and be com- 
mented upon by himself. The range of these topics 
(when political economy was the subject) — taking in 
questions of agriculture and soil-fertilization, of canals 
and railroads, of commerce, of cotton-gins or steam- 
ploughs, of population, of schools and churches and pub- 
lic charities in their economic relations, and of those 
rising civilizations which bear up art and foster science, 
both necessitating and making possible greater civil 
and spiritual freedom, yet having their roots among 
these lower material conditions — illustrates the com- 
prehensiveness of Mr. Mann's favorite methods of 
educating and instructing our minds. 

'^ But even this was not so peculiar to him as a cer- 
tain personal impulse he imparted to all who came in 
contact with him — the impetus with which his mind 
smote our minds, rousing us, and kindling a heat of 
enthusiasm, as it were, by the very power of that spir- 
itual persuasion. It was in this that he was so incom- 
parable. A man might as well hope to dwell near the 
sun unmoved as not to glow when brought to feel his 
fervid love of truth and heart-felt zeal in its quest. 
The fresh delight of childhood seemed miraculously 
prolonged through his life ; truth never palled upon his 
mind ; the world never wore a sickly light. And this 
cheerful spirit, which was at bottom nothing but the 
most living faith in God and man, was so contagious, 
that indifference, misanthropy, despair of attaining 



258 HORACE MANN 

truth, gave way before it, or were transformed into a 
like hearty enthusiasm. 

" Then, in guiding the new-roused impulse, he was 
so conscientious and candid, so careful not to trench 
on the borders of individuality, nor to let our loving 
respect for him so fix our eyes on his opinion that we 
would lose the beckon of some approximate truth, 
that we felt him as gentle to guide as he was powerful 
to inspire." 

It is interesting to note that Mr. Mann's interest in 
the world grew as his own life lengthened, and that he 
became more and more absorbed in laboring for his 
fellow-men. For example, the day he was sixty years 
old, he wrote thus to his friend Combe : " To-day, 
according to the old family Bible, I am sixty years 
old. This event excites in my mind a strangely 
mingled feeling, made up of joy and pain, to say 
nothing of a readiness or unreadiness to die. I am 
too intensely interested in the great questions of 
human progress, of humanity itself, to be willing to 
quit the field in this stage of the conflict. The vital 
questions of pauperism, temperance, slavery, peace, and 
education, covering as they do many digits of the orb 
of human happiness, I cannot relinquish, I cannot 
leave, without a feeling of the description of breaking 
heart-strings from objects which they have entwined. 
You may tell me the work will go on, and perhaps it 
will ; but I want it should go on in my day. 1 long 
to see it. I want to help it, to expend myself upon it, 
and life seems bereaved of its noblest functions and 
faculties if it fails in this. I feel for these causes as 
a fond father feels for his children whom he dreads to 



PRESIDENT OE ANTIOCH COLLEGE 259 

leave until they are out of moral danger, and have the 
common securities and guarantees for future safety 
and welfare." 

It is painful to be compelled to turn the shield 
about again, but we have no choice. Moreover, the 
story that has been told becomes more impressive 
when taken in connection with facts that have so far 
been kept out of view. 

When Mr. Mann took leave of the last of his 
Eastern friends on starting for the West in 1853, he 
wept like a child. He was thinking, of coarse, of 
what he was leaving behind; but his tears were 
prophetic of what was before. Disappointments began 
the moment he set foot in Yellow Springs. The 
faculty found nothing in readiness but their own 
hearts. The buildings, all unfinished and unfur- 
nished, stood among the stumps of great forest trees 
that had been cut down to make room for them. 
There was not a book in the library room, or a shelf 
on which to place a book. These matters, however, 
could be mended much sooner than some others that 
were at first far less obtrusive. The buildings were 
in time completed and furnished ; but, before this was 
done, Mr. Mann discovered that the whole property 
was buried deep in debts. Funds were lacking with 
which to carry on the school. The scholarships filled 
the classrooms and emptied the treasury. The book- 
keeping was careless. Dissensions arose in the faculty 
that, in the end, could be suppressed only by resorting 
to the dismissal of teachers; and then one of those 
who was dismissed retorted by assailing the presi- 
dent and the College management in a vituperative 



260 HORACE MANN 

volume of more than three hundred pages, to which 
Mr. Mann and some of his associates felt compelled 
to reply.-^ Nor could the governing authorities be kept 
in line. The local business manager arrogated to 
himself powers that belonged to the president or 
board of trustees. There was constant interference 
in the appointment of teachers, and the trustees were 
sometimes at variance. When Mr. Mann's friends in 
the East came to the rescue of the College and claimed 
some recognition in consequence, the cry was raised 
that the Unitarians had improper designs upon the 
institution. The president's religious views were im- 
pugned and he was put on the defensive. The plat- 
form of liberal Christianity did not prove to be broad 
enough to hold all those who had co-operated in the 
enterprise. In a short time a large number of the 
Church that had founded the College were alienated 
from it. When Mr. Mann took membership in the 
Church and became a minister, the act brought from 
one quarter the charge that he had sacrificed his 
convictions, and from another quarter the criticism 
that he did not observe the ordinances. Many of the 
Christian Connection, inclining to Orthodoxy, believed 
in calls to the ministry and in the work of the spirit ; 
and this wing denounced Mr. Mann because, obedient 
to " the laws," he forbade revivals in the College, and 
did not favor prayer meetings. It soon became ap- 
parent to the discerning that, with all their virtues 
and zeal, much the larger part of the Christian Con- 

1 History of the Rise, Difficulties, and Suspension of Antioch 
College, by Ira W. Allen, Rejoinder to I. W. Allen's Pseudo- 
History of Antioch College. Yellow Springs, Ohio, 1859. 



PRESIDENT OF ANTIOCH COLLEGE 261 

nection had not even a faint conception of an institu- 
tion of liberal education. Mann now learned in the 
school of bitter experience that liberal Christians 
could be as narrow and selfish as Calvinists; that 
preachers of liberality may be intolerant and critics 
of intolerance illiberal. Woman's rights made some 
trouble. The general lack of cultivation was reflected 
in the students who flocked to the College in increasing 
numbers. Of the two hundred students who presented, 
themselves at the opening of the first year, only six 
were found to be prepared for the Freshman class. 
Some of the stories showing the prevailing ignorance 
of the ordinary conventionalities of Eastern society 
are at once amusing and painful ; they show the mean- 
ing of the question that the New England colony 
sometimes asked, " Shall we laugh or shall we cry ? '' 
Still the students as a whole showed mental and moral 
qualities that evoked the president's enthusiasm, and 
called out from him the remark, '^ I can endure anything 
for these young people." 

Things went from bad to worse. Within a year 
Mr. Mann's health gave way and, although he re- 
covered from his serious illness, from that time it 
became more precarious. The College debts in- 
creased. His salary was unpaid. He wrote the 
Rev. 0. J. Wait, who had questioned him about his 
religious views, that at Yellow Spring he was an 
exile from all the personal friends of his youth and 
life, deprived of almost all those abundant means of 
literary and scientific delight which until four years 
before had constituted so important a part of his 
enjoyment. If he could be released from the College, 



262 HORACE MANN 

he could earn a thousand dollars more in three 
months than his salary for a year, and have the other 
nine months to himself. He had never been among 
more sectarian people in his life than no inconsider- 
able number of the Christian Connection were ; there 
were souls so small, he said, that if a million of them 
were sprinkled on the polished surface of a diamond 
they would not make it dusty. Friends importuned 
him to give up the unequal battle, but he could not 
be moved in his determination to stand by the Col- 
lege so long as there was anything to stand by. 
Necessity was laid upon him. Bitterly disappointed 
as he had been, wasting away as his strength was, 
he still saw the possibility of building up a strong 
institution that should exemplify his favorite edu- 
cational and religious ideas. He wrote to Theodore 
Parker : ^' When I think of what was once my home 
and my sphere, a feeling which I suppose must be 
like Turkish fatalism comes over me, and I say to 
myself, ^Here you are and here you must remain. 
Fate has you in his grip, and resistance is impossible. 
No secondary cause can relieve you, at least for a 
time. Go on and transmute your evil into good as 
far as you can.' So I submit, and try to make sun- 
rises and sunsets look as when I could see my friends 
in the horizon." He had written to Combe about 
the time that he reached Ohio : " I am well aware 
that the seed which I hope to sow will hardly come 
up in my day; but my Causality is so strong that 
what is to be at any time has a semblance of being 
immediately present." On June 18, 1856, he wrote : 
"In all this Great West ours is the only institution 



PRESIDENT OF ANTIOCH COLLEGE 263 

of a first-class character which is not directly or indi- 
rectly under the influence of the old school theology ; 
and though the mass of the people here are more 
liberal-minded, and free-thoughted, more open and 
receptive and less cast-irony than the corresponding 
classes in the East, yet the ministers are more narrow 
and bigoted. Our College, therefore, is like breaking 
a hole in the Chinese wall. It lets in the light 
of religious civilization where it never shone before. 
Think of this great State, with more than two mill- 
ions of inhabitants, and only one Unitarian society ! " 
January 1, 1856, he wrote to Gerritt Smith that the 
last sands of Antioch College were running out ; that 
large gifts must be obtained, or the institution would 
sink; that the students, averaging about three hun- 
dred in number from the opening, would be dispersed ; 
and that the College, with its promise of liberal 
Christianity, free thought, and coeducation, was likely 
to end in failure; thirty days would tell the story. 
But the inevitable issue is not averted by allowing 
it continually to recede before us. The end was pa- 
thetic in the extreme. Nature gave her usual warn- 
ings, but Mr. Mann denied a final appeal to resign, 
and defended the denial by saying that the work in 
which he was engaged was worth a thousand such 
men as he was. In June, 1859, the College was sold 
to clear away the debts, and reorganization followed. 
Commencement day, which was a day of general re- 
joicing, gave him his death-blow ; he never recovered 
from its labors and excitement. On that day his bac- 
calaureate address closed with the oft-quoted words : 
" Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory 



264 HORACE MANN 

for liumaiiity." From this time, his little remaining 
strength ebbed rapidly away. He could neither eat 
nor rest, while noise tormented him. His family and 
reliefs of devoted students did what they could to 
assuage his sufferings. When told that he had but 
three hours to live, he sent for a student who had 
caused him much anxiety and, when he came, gave 
him some earnest parting counsel. Then, the room 
where he lay having filled with people, he exhorted 
all present to lives of usefulness and duty. He di- 
rected his children, when they wished to know what 
to do, to ask themselves what Christ would have 
done in the same circumstances. He said to his 
friend, Mr, Fay: "Preach God's laws, preach them, 
preach them," — his voice rising each time he pro- 
nounced the words. He died August 2, at the age 
of sixty-three years. He died a martyr to Antioch 
College ; and, next to his own spirit, the most beauti- 
ful thing in the story is the devotion of his students 
to him while he lived and to his memory when he 
was dead. He was first buried in the College grounds, 
but the next year his remains were removed to Prov- 
idence, Rhode Island, and interred beside those of 
his first wife. 

The tributes that Mr. Mann's death called out con- 
stitute a literature by themselves. They came from 
all intelligent classes, but particularly students and 
teachers, philanthropists and statesmen. He was 
mourned by the friends of temperance, the oppo- 
nents of slavery, and the advocates of moral reform, 
as well as teachers and educators. Charles Sumner 
wrote to Theodore Parker from Europe : " You will 



PRESIDENT OF ANTIOCH COLLEGE 265 

mourn Horace Mann ; he has done much ; but I wish 
he had lived to enjoy the fruits of his noble toils. 
He never should have left Massachusetts: His last 
years would have been happier and more influential 
had he stayed at home. His portrait ought to be in 
every public school in the State, and his statue in 
the State House." ^ Sumner's two prayers have both 
been answered in spirit. Mann's portrait hangs in 
thousands of Massachusetts schoolrooms, and a statue 
of him, erected by his friends and admirers, together 
with the school children of the State stands in front 
of the State House in Boston.^ 

1 Memoir and Letters of Charles Sumner, Vol. III., p. 597. 

2 This statue was unveiled July 4, 1865, Dr. S. G. Howe, Gov- 
ernor Andrew, and other distinguished men participating in the 
exercises. Mr. E. L. Pierce seems to consider the statue a reply to 
the one of Webster previously erected. "Two visible mementos 
of the controversy concerning Webster remain in the statues of 
Webster and Mann placed in front of the State House in Boston by 
their respective partisans." — Memoir and Letters of Charles Sum- 
ner, Vol. III., p. 211, note. 

Note. — Dr. Thomas Hill immediately succeeded Mr. Mann as 
president of Antioch College. The institution was practically sus- 
pended during the Civil War. At the close of the war it was resus- 
citated, and control at the same time passed into the hands of the 
Unitarians since that day. The College has enlisted in its service 
some distinguished men, and has won for itself a recognized place 
among the better colleges of Ohio. 



CHAPTEE XII 
HORACE MANN'S CHARACTER AND WORK 

It is hoped that the story of Horace Mann has 
been so told in the preceding pages as to present 
the essential features of his life, character, and work. 
At the same time, before offering, in a final chapter, 
some remarks on the further progress of the public 
school revival after he resigned his Secretaryship, it 
will be well to gather up into one view the charac- 
teristic facts of the story. ]^aturally, much more 
stress will be laid upon his strong points than his 
limitations. 

The first thing to grasp is the fact that Mr. Mann 
was not a theorist, philosopher, or scientific peda- 
gogist. His writings show no trace of speculative 
talents. In all his work, he was devoted to the prac- 
tical or useful. We need not inquire how far nature 
and how far nurture contributed to produce this re- 
sult: the plain fact cannot be mistaken. Moreover, 
his great successes, so far as they were due to intel- 
lectual causes, find their explanation in his practical 
talents. In 1837 Massachusetts was in no mood for 
a mere thinker in the Secretaryship of the Board of 
Education. Here, also, is the secret of his acceptance 
of phrenology as his scheme of metaphysics, and of 

266 



HORACE MANN'S CHARACTER AND WORK 267 

his taking physiology for psychology.^ He was no 
crude empiricist, however, content merely to cut and 
try. He sought for a plan or scheme that he could 
make work in education and moral reform, and not 
finding one that suited him in the current philosophy 
and theology, he took up with the large but specious 
promises of Gall and his disciples. He was not at- 
tracted by the shoAvman's side of phrenology, but 
was rather impressed by "the laws" of which his 
friend Combe wrote and said so much. The same 
mental habit made him impatient of the niceties 
of scholarship and the refinements of thought, and 
tended to make him satisfied with the substance of 
things.^ He had a quick eye for objective facts, and 
his "Causality," as he fondly called it, rendered him 
strong in argument, but with a tendency to go to ex- 
tremes, as his controversial writings very plainly show. 
Within its compass, his imagination was powerful. 



1 See the letter on Horace Mann that Theodore Parker wrote to 
Dr. S. G. Howe, on hearing of his death. — John Weiss, Life and 
Correspondence of Theodore Parker. Boston, 1864, Vol. H., pp. 
341-345. 

2 Mr. E. L. Pierce says Charles Sumner's friends often sub- 
mitted their MSS. and first proofs to him for correction, and they 
frequently came back so changed that their authors hardly knew 
them. "He cut to pieces a lecture which Horace Mann sent to 
him for revision, and an impartial and competent journalist, who 
happened to see it covered with his pencil-marks, says that every 
change was an improvement. Mr. Mann wrote with force and elo- 
quence, but there was a want of chasteness and finish in his style. 
He adopted in this instance many of Sumner's suggestions, but 
rebelled against some of his rules, contending in a letter of self- 
vindication that they were begotten of fastidiousness," etc. — Me- 
moir and Letters of Charles Sumner. Boston, 1893, Vol. HI., pp. 
57, 58. 



268 HORACE MANN 

Theodore Parker, who knew him well in later life, 
while denying that there was any idealism or poetry 
in the man, said his mind was as rich in figures and 
as vivid as a New England meadow in June. If a 
poet was lost in him, as Mann himself believed, it 
must have been a didactic poet, a homilist in verse. 
In his wonted fields, he was fertile in ideas, and this 
fertility, together with his imagination, gave to his 
educational writings variety and freshness. 

The second fact is that Mann's moral nature domi- 
nated his intellect so completely as to intensify its 
defects. His devotion to truth and right, as he saw 
them, his sense of duty, his unselfishness, his benevo- 
lence, were very marked. His moral earnestness was 
something tremendous, and constituted the first of the 
two great motive powers of his life. It came from 
his Puritan ancestry and education. In later life, he 
deprecated his Puritan training, but he never passed 
beyond its influence. He vvas a Puritan without the 
theology ; or, as M. Pecaut says : " This son of the 
Pilgrim Pathers, unfaithful to their theological doc- 
trine, remains the heir of their spirit." He lived the 
Puritan's austere life, and showed his concentration 
and intensity in everything that he did, even in his 
opposition to the Puritan's religion. The narrowness 
that he learned of the Puritans made it impossible 
for him to do them justice. He had no just concep- 
tion of Calvinism as an agent in the disciplining of 
mankind, and once wrote to his friend Combe that 
for himself he preferred the religion of Black Hawk 
to the religion of John Calvin. Perhaps the degree 
to which he emancipated himself from the narrow- 



HORACE MANN'S CHARACTER AND WORK 269 

ness of his early training is the best proof of his 
greatness, but his emancipation was not complete. 

Moral enthusiasm like Mr. Mann's is generally 
found in the idealist and the radical. jSTevertheless, 
he was an opportuuist in the better sense of that word. 
While a strong antislavery man, he refused to go with 
the abolitionists. He voted for Robert C. Winthrop 
for speaker of the House of Representatives in 1849, 
and, when challenged, defended his vote with an op- 
portunist's argument. "If we must have one of two 
men for speaker, you do nothing towards deterring 
me from supporting one of them on the ground that 
he is a bad man, so long as I can prove the other to 
be a worse one." Some of his best friends in the 
East thought his joining the church at Yellow 
Springs, considering his views, an act of sheer du- 
plicity ; but Mann, under the circumstances, regarded 
this as a useful step to take, and not immoral, as 
he explains in one or more of his letters. His 
eyes were fully opened to the limitations of his 
new brethren; but he still believed, as he wrote to 
Combe, that the Christian Connection was the best or 
only door through which liberal religious principles 
could enter the Western country. When Mr. Parker 
said Mann did not know that a straight line is the 
shortest distance between two points in morals as in 
mathematics, he probably had this trait of character 
in mind. The question involved is an old one and 
will never be finally answered. Idealism and oppor- 
tunism flow from native qualities of mind ; they are 
things of degree also, while both are essential to the 
balance of the individual man and the progress of 



270 HORACE MANN 

mankind. But in one thing Mr. Mann was an ideal- 
ist : lie was a teetotaler and a prohibitionist. It was 
his powerful moral enthusiasm that constituted the 
second of the two great forces that moved him to 
action. Perhaps no man of his State and time was 
more strongly moved by the modern passion for social 
improvement. 

Humor helps the man who has it to get easily 
around many a sharp corner — keeps him from taking 
the world too seriously. On the other hand it tends, 
and especially in those who are wanting in energy of 
character, to beget that laissez-faire habit of mind 
which so easily finds excuses for evils that should be 
remedied or mitigated. In this quality Mr. Mann wa.s 
deficient. Had he had more humor he might have 
been more easy-going and indifferent, and therefore 
less effective ; it is quite certain that he would have 
viewed some things which annoyed him with greater 
toleration, and would never have written some pages 
that he felt constrained to write. This deficiency was 
rendered the more serious by his extreme sensitive- 
ness. His friend Parker wrote: "How he licked the 
schoolmasters ! If one of the little mosquitoes bit 
him, Mann thought he had never taken quite notice 
enough of the creature till he had smashed it to 
pieces with a 48-pound cannon shot, which rang 
through the land." 

Horace Mann's contribution to educational progress 
was perfectly congruous with both his mental and 
moral character and the conditions that surrounded 
him. His very limitations blended with his great 
positive qualities to fit him for his work. He stood, 



HORACE MANN'S CHARACTEE AND WORK 271 

too, in just the right relation to what had gone before. 
It is hoped that this volume redeems, at least in part, 
the promise that a well-known writer made at the 
time that Mrs. Mann's Life appeared : •' The history 
of common schools in this country, when it is written, 
will reveal a great amount of now almost forgotten 
labor in the field where the laurels of Mann were 
won." It was Mann's great good fortune, and the 
great good fortune of Massachusetts also, that all the 
factors necessary to a grand educational movement so 
fully harmonized when he took up the work. 

In these pages we have been dealing with a man 
of action and not with a philosopher. We have told 
a story, not expounded a system of thought. The 
book is a record of facts accomplished rather than 
of ideas. Moreover, this life is an epistle that even 
the wayfaring man may read and not err therein. 
Everything lies open and clear. We encounter no 
difficulties either of opinion or of conduct to be ex- 
plained. There are no intricate puzzles to be solved. 
Mr. Mann's works contain no deep thoughts re- 
garding the more difficult problems of education. 
He had little insight into the problem of educa- 
tion values beyond the practical uses of studies. He 
placed small stress upon discipline and culture as 
such, and did not grasp the conception of science for 
science' sake. He exaggerated the value of physi- 
ology, and found no adequate place in the school for 
history — not even the history of the United States. 
He thought it better for children to study bookkeep- 
ing than algebra, because they would have occasion 
to use the one and not the other, and recommended 



272 HORACE MANN 

that country cliildren should study surveying instead 
of geometry, because the surveyor measures the lands 
and lays out the roads. While he was the represent- 
ative, in a sense, of the urban school, he did little 
towards the solution of its more difficult problems, as 
grading, classification, promotions, and the course of 
study. He believed in the sujoervision of teachers, 
but the record does not show that he appreciated the 
status and work of the school superintendent. In 
many particulars he was a man of his generation. 

But it is time to drop negatives and qualifiers 
and to seek grounds for positive judgment. On three 
or four pedagogical questions Mr. Mann did lay 
teachers and the public under large obligations. He 
condemned the traditionary method of teaching read- 
ing as artificial, wasteful of time, and partly ineffectual. 
He saw that children in schools needed reading matter 
to supplement their school readers. He believed in 
teaching science, and advocated objective, illustra- 
tive, and oral teaching in the elementary schools. 
He pleaded for more rational and humane methods 
of disciplining and governing children. He under- 
stood the relation of mental cultivation to physical 
health and vigor. He laid hold of the spirit of the 
inductive method; he knew that the child's know- 
ledge is made up of bits, and not of large generaliza- 
tions. For example, he wrote in the Second Eeport : 
" In many of the reading books now in use in the 
schools, the most pithy sayings of learned men, the 
aphorisms in which moralists have deposited a life 
of observation and experience, the maxims of philoso- 
phers embodying the highest forms of intellectual 



HORACE MANN'S CHARACTER AND WORK 273 

truth, are set do^^ii as First Lessons for children — 
as though, because a child ivas born after Bacon 
and Franklin, he could understand them, of course. 
While a child is still engrossed with visible and pal- 
pable objects, while his juvenile playthings are yet 
a mystery to him, he is presented with some abstrac- 
tion or generalization, just discovered after the pro- 
foundest study of men and things by some master 
intellect. . . . Erudite and scientific men, for their 
own convenience, have formed summaries, digests, 
abstracts of their knowledge, each sentence of which 
contains a thousand elements of truth that have been 
mastered in detail ; and, on inspection of these abbre- 
viated forms, they are reminded of, not taught, the 
individual truths they contain. Yet these are given 
to children as though they would call up in their 
minds the same ideas which they suggest to their 
authors." These were all great services ; we need not 
hesitate to call them distinct anticipations of the New 
Education. 

Still Mr. Mann's greatest services to education 
must be sought in another quarter — in the field of 
institutions, organization, administration, legislation, 
and public opinion. He was a great constructive 
pedagogist, a wise educational statesman, an elo- 
quent tribune of the common school. He called upon 
the people of all classes, as with the voice of a 
herald, to raise their estimate of public instruction, 
and to provide better facilities by which it could be 
furnished. He devised or adopted new educational 
agencies, and persuaded the people to use them. He 
organized public opinion, and influenced the action of 



274 HORACE MANN 

legislatures. He gave men higher ideas of the work 
and character of the teacher at the same time that he 
taught the teacher to magnify his office. He height- 
ened the popular estimate of the instruments that 
are conducive and necessary to the existence of good 
schools. He elevated men's ideas of the value of 
ethical training, and made valuable suggestions look- 
ing to its prosecution. But his great theme was the 
relation of intellectual and moral knowledge to hu- 
man well-being, individual and social. Here his faith 
never faltered, his ardor never cooled. In no other 
name did he trust for the safety of society. A con- 
firmed rationalist, he looked with supreme confidence 
to the healing power of popular intelligence and virtue. 
In his successive reports and addresses he set forth 
his faith, and the grounds of it, with wonderful force 
of statement and fertility of illustration. To him the 
old theme was ever new and ever fascinating. He 
poured into the body politic a large measure of his 
own lofty faith, his great unselfishness, his burn- 
ing enthusiasm. He believed in the democratizing 
movement of modern times, and preached the per- 
fectibility of man. It was in this way that, as Mr. 
Parker said, he took up the common schools of Massa- 
chusetts in his arms and blessed them. No doubt he 
committed the mistake that rationalists are always 
prone to commit — that of overestimating the power 
of intelligence as a means to virtue; still it is perfectly 
obvious that a generous measure of such confidence is 
a prerequisite to the efficiency and even to the exist- 
ence of public schools, and that it forms the very 
foundation of democratic government. How far the 



HORACE MANN'S CHARACTER AND WORK 275 

last quarter of the century is tending to confirm tliis 
faith, in popular institutions, and how far to shake it, 
is a question at once large and remote from our pur- 
pose. It is, however, clear that an optimistic view of 
human nature lies at the root of modern democracy 
and all its developments. 

To measure Mr. Mann's educational influence is a 
much more difficult undertaking than it is to describe 
its character. To do this in quantitative terms is of 
course impossible. It is a matter of judgment, and 
differences of opinion might easily declare themselves. 
Still we can, in general terms, point out its range and 
compass. 

First of all, it must not be supposed that Mr. Mann 
started the movement for popular education. That 
movement, as we have clearly seen, was the result of 
manifold causes and antedated his appearance upon 
the scene of action. He did not even inaugurate the 
movement in Massachusetts. What he did was rather 
to take his position at its head, just as it gained the 
recognition of the State, and to direct it as long as he 
was Secretary of the Board of Education. Much that 
he did in those twelve years, though by no means all, 
can be summarized in terms. Eirst, the campaign of 
education in Massachusetts that he conducted was 
thoroughly successful; the people of the State were 
converted again to that one of their ancient institu- 
tions in which their faith had most waned — their com- 
mon schools. Secondly, the Board of Education and the 
Secretaryship were strongly entrenched in the public 
confidence ; before he laid down his office all serious 
danger of a backward step had passed away. Thirdly, 



276 HOEACE MANN 

the Normal schools, the teachers' institutes, the county 
associations, and school district libraries were founded 
and placed beyond the reach of hostile influences. 
Fourthly, the common schools made great material 
progress. The appropriations more than doubled; a 
sum in excess of $2,000,000 was spent in providing 
better schoolhouses and equipments ; the wages of 
men teachers increased 62 per cent, of women teachers 
51 per cent, while the relative number of women 
teachers had increased 54 per cent; a month was 
added to the average length of the school ; the ratio 
of the private school expenditure to the public school 
expenditure fell from 75 per cent to 36 per cent ; the 
compensation of school committees was made compul- 
sory, and the supervision which they exercised over 
the schools improved in both quantity and quality; 
about 50 new high schools were established, thus restor- 
ing secondary teaching to large numbers of pupils. 
Fifthly, the schools improved in studies, in text-books, 
in both the absolute and relative number of pupils in 
attendance, in methods of teaching and discipline, 
and, above all, in spirit. And lastly, and most impor- 
tant of all, these achievements were a sure pledge of 
that splendid progress in popular education which 
Massachusetts has continued to make from 1848 to the 
present time. It is not pretended, indeed, that Mr. 
Mann did all this. The Board of Education zealously 
seconded his efforts ; a great many teachers and edu- 
cators supported him with steadiness and courage ; 
the people rallied to the standard of reform ; much 
of the work would have been accomplished, and per- 
haps all of it, if Mr. Mann had continued in his law 



HOKACE MANN'S CHAKACTER AND WORK 277 

office, or had never been born : still the fact remains, 
and must never be forgotten, that it was under his 
leadership that the long march forward was made, 
and that to his insight, "wisdom, self-denial, and 
courage it was very largely due. Nothing but a 
knowledge of the facts is necessary to show why it is 
that in Massachusetts the names of Horace Mann and 
the public school revival are almost synonymous.^ 

Outside of Massachusetts, and particularly outside 
of New England, it is much more difficult to estimate 
Mann's influence than it is within those limits. Some 
facts bearing upon this branch of the subject have 
already been presented, and others will be given in the 
final chapter. Here it will suffice to say that this in- 
fluence soon extended to every State that shared in the 
early educational movement, and has since reached 
every State in the Union; that it was partly direct, 
through addresses, reports, correspondence, and other 
writings ; partly indirect, through the influence of the 
Massachusetts schools, for that State, for a time, was 
the leader in educational reform, holding a position 
among the States comparable to Mr. Mann's position 
among educational men. 

When we pass beyond our own country our path 
becomes still less plain. Ko doubt Mr. Mann's princi- 
pal influence in foreign countries has been mainly in- 
direct, making itself felt through American schools. 
And still his personality has been distinctly recognized 
by European educators. 

1 See Mr. Mann's last Annual Report, the opening paragraphs; 
also G. H. Martin's Evolution of the Common School System of 
Massachusetts, pp. 174, 175, 198. 



278 - HORACE MANN 

In 1841 George Combe contributed to The Edin- 
burgh Review an article on "Education in the State of 
Massachusetts," based upon Mr. Mann's early Reports 
and other docmnents, in which, in addition to an his- 
torical sketch, he described the work that was going 
forward under Mr. Mann's supervision, and drew from 
the story lessons that he commended to the British 
public.^ The principal part of the Seventh Report 
was republished in England in 1846, and in 1857 had 
reached a fourth edition. Dr. Hodgson, the editor, 
said in his preface : " The absence of the advantages 
which a more leisurely and extensive examination 
would doubtless have given to our author is greatly 
compensated by the presence of a clear and pene- 
trating judgment, trained by experience, and little, 
if at all, biassed by prejudice." Chambers's Journal, 
at the time, published liberal extracts from the Re- 
port, which it recommended to the British people as 
the production of " such a mind as, unfortunately, we 
see but rarely devoted to the subject of education; 
one expressing, we should say, the highest tone of 
moral and intellectual culture, and yet as careful 
respecting the practical details of its subject as it is 
profoundly reflective on general ideas and results." 

Mr. Mann has also attracted the attention of Conti- 
nental educators. Both Italian and Erench writers 
have honorably recognized his work. Perhaps the 
most valuable of these writings is. The Work and 

1 Still later Mr. Combe urged that the essential features of the 
Massachusetts system should be introduced into England. The so- 
called " Manchester Programme," drawn up in 1847, was on the lines 
of Combe's article in The Edinburgh Revieio . — Life of Combe, 
Vol. II., pp. 237, 238. 



HORACE MANN'S CHARACTER AND WORK 279 

Writings of Horace Maim, by M. J. Gaufres, consti- 
tuting Yol. XXXIX. of the Educational Memoirs and 
Documents published by the Musee Pedagogique, Paris, 
1888. A review of this work by Felix Pecaut, pub- 
lished in the Review Pedagogique, is one of the most 
eloquent articles on Mr. Mann that has been writ- 
ten. " I wish," says M. Pecaut, " that the biog- 
raphy of Horace Mann might be known not only to 
teachers of Normal schools, but to the pupils and to 
our innumerable staff of primary teachers. I wish 
that it might be circulated among the professors of 
universities and colleges. This is by no means all 
that I could desire. I should like to see it in the 
hands of every public man." ^ 

Mr. Mann's influence was neither slight nor transient. 
It survived both his resignation of the Secretaryship 
and his death ; it has continued strong to the present 
time, and promises to be one of the permanent spirit- 
ual powers of the country. Reference has already 
been made to the impression made upon men's minds 
by his death. The centennial of his birth was com- 
memorated throughout the land, the memorial ser- 
vices that were held, and the essays and articles that 
were published, testifying in a most eloquent manner 
to the hold that he has on the intellect and conscience 
of the nation. A bibliography of Mann prepared at the 
time, which is still incomplete, embraces more than 
seven hundred titles.^ Some of these are duplicates, and 

1 A translation of M. Pecaut's article will be found in the Life 
and Works of Horace Mann, Vol. V., Appendix. 

2 Report of the Commissioner of Education for 1895-1896 ; 
Chap. XVn. 



280 HORACE MANN 

many more relate to politics ; but when all abatements 
have been made, the list shows most happily how gener- 
ally and deeply Mr. Mann moved the American people 
on the subject of education. 

If, as the philosophers tell us, it is helpful and 
strengthening for the disciples of good causes to study 
their history, familiarizing themselves with their ori- 
gins, and imbuing themselves with the ideas and the 
spirit of their foimders and confessors, then it must 
be helpful and strengthening for all believers in pub- 
lic education to become acquainted with the life and 
work of Horace Mann. No better prescription can be 
made for the teacher and educator, the public man 
and the patriot. He may have exaggerated the heal- 
ing power of knowledge ; nevertheless, if the public 
schools, at any time, become weak and sickly, a new 
baptism in the thought and spirit of him who did so 
much to extend and improve them will be their best 
restorative. 

This view of Mr. Mannas work has been limited to 
the common school field for two reasons. It is ex- 
tremely difficult to estimate his influence upon higher 
education. On this point good judges would prob- 
ably differ widely. A conservative opinion is no doubt 
the wiser one. But however that may be, all competent 
men will agree that Mann's reputation rests, and must 
ever rest, upon the work that he did for common 
schools. 



CHAPTER XIII 
THE PROGRESS OF THE COMMON SCHOOL REVIVAL 

This is a large subject to bring within the compass 
of a single chapter. Fortunately, however, only the 
bolder outlines need to be traced out. 

The second chapter of this work showed that the 
Northern States of the American Union actively 
shared in the general educational quickening that 
marked the first half of the present century; also 
that the Southern States participated in it, but to a 
much less degree. When Horace Mann first appeared 
on the scene, some of the States were already in ac- 
tive motion, and others were ready to move when the 
needed impulse should be applied. The creation of 
the Massachusetts Board of Education soon caused 
the first class of States to move more rapidly, and 
gave the needed impulse to the others. Naturally, 
neighboring States were the first to respond. Natu- 
rally, too, the action of Massachusetts set the copy 
for other States to follow, especially the New England 
States where the general conditions were very much 
the same. In other words, the first step that many of 
the States took was to establish a central State author- 
ity by means of which educational information could 
be gathered and diffused, and some intelligent direc- 
tion be given to the public schools. 

281 



282 HORACE MANN 

Connecticut was the first State to move. In 1838 
her legislature joassed an act creating a board of com- 
mon school commissioners, with a secretary as chief 
executive officer. The passage of this act was mainly 
due to the eloquent advocacy of a man who stands sec- 
ond in the educational revival only to Horace Mann, 
and who, in one important respect, rendered the cause 
services still more distinguished. This man was Henry 
Barnard, now the Nestor of American educators. Mr. 
Barnard was a lawyer and a member of the legislature, 
a thorough scholar, and deeply interested in the sub- 
ject of education.^ Like Mr. Mann, he yielded to im- 
portunity and became the first Secretary of the State 
Board. The newly created Board and its Secretary 
immediately set to work on the lines that are already 
familiar to us. Conventions were held, information col- 
lected, reports made and published, the teachers' insti- 
tute invented. The Connecticut Common School Journal 
was launched and new school legislation procured. Ap- 
parently, everything was in excellent trim when, in 
1842, the legislature, alleging the inutility and expense 
of the new measures, repealed the act of four years 
before and most of the valuable subsequent legisla- 
tion. The blow was a paralyzing one. Mr. Barnard 
now devoted himself for more than a year to collect- 

1 Henry Barnard was born in Hartford, Connecticut, January 
24, 1811. He was educated in the common district school, the 
academy, and Yale College, graduating from this institution in 
1830. He travelled in the United States and Europe, taught for a 
time in Pennsylvania, and came to the bar in 1835. In entering 
upon his educational career, he renounced brilliant professional 
prospects, not to speak of political preferment. This was but the 
beginning of his self-sacrifice. Mr. Barnard was moved by the im- 
pulse that moved Mann and his coadjutors. 



PKOGEESS OE COMMON SCHOOL EEVIVAL 283 

ing materials for an elaborate work to be entitled, 
History of Public Schools and the Means of Popular 
Education in the United States, but before it was 
prepared lie was again drawn into active public 
service. 

In 1843 the legislature of Ebode Island passed an 
act creating tbe office of commissioner of common 
schools. This was done largely through Mr. Bar- 
nard's exertions, and on its passage he accepted, at the 
hands of the governor, an appointment to the new 
office. He devoted five years to organizing public 
instruction in that State, and then, his health failing, 
he resigned and returned to Connecticut. In his ab- 
sence the Connecticut legislature had slowly been 
undoing the precipitate work of 1842. In 1845 it had 
made the Commissioner of the State School Fund 
superintendent of common schools, ex officio. Then in 
1849 the legislature passed a new act founding a State 
Normal school, the principal of which should also be 
State superintendent of schools. Dr. Barnard was 
at once placed in this responsible office, which he con- 
tinued to hold until 1855, devoting himself mainly to 
the duties of the superintendency.-^ 

The other New England States fell into line one by 
one. In 1845 Vermont created the office of State 
superintendent of schools, New Hampshire provided 
for a commissioner of schools the next year, and 
Maine created a State board of education with a 
secretary about the same time. In all these States 

1 Henry Barnard, The American Journal of Education, Vol. I., 
pp. 659-738, republished from The Connecticut Common School 
Journal; also The North AmeHcan Revieio, July, 1848. 



284 HORACE MANN 

tlie full equipment of new educational machinery was 
in due course of time provided. 

West of the Hudson River the waters were already 
moving. Particularly was this the case in Kew York. 
Provision was made for establishing teachers' depart- 
ments in certain academies of the State as early as 
1833 — a policy that has been continued until the 
present time. So much of the United States Deposit 
Fund as fell to the State in accordance with the law 
of 1837 was applied to augment the school fund.^ 
County boards of visitors were appointed as early as 
1839, charged with the duty, which they performed, 
however, gratuitously, of visiting the common schools. 
County su]3erintendents came in 1840, were afterwards 
discontinued, a,nd were then permanently restored in 
1856. The District Scliool Journal was established by 
Mr. Prancis Dwight at Geneva in the same year, and 
shortly became the oiBficial organ of the State educa- 
tional executive. The first institute was held in 
1843, and the State ]S"ormal School at Albany opened 
its doors, with David P. Page as principal, the next 
year. In 1845 a declaration of the State superin- 
tendent against the policy of the school-rate bill 
placed that issue clearly before the people, but the 
free school was not won for more than twenty years 
thereafter. Pinally, the office of State superintendent 
became wholly independent in 1854, when it was 
finally separated from the office of Secretary of State. 

Still farther to the west the settlement of the 
country and the educational revival were contempo- 

1 The History of the Surplus Revenue of 1837. By Edward G. 
Bourne, New York, 1885. 



PROGRESS OF COMMON SCHOOL REVIVAL 285 

raneous. The first OMo school law, passed in 1821, 
was a very imperfect law, but it was considerably 
strengthened in 1825 and 1828. In 1837 the office of 
State superintendent of common schools was created, 
and Samuel Lewis was appointed to the position 
three months before Horace Mann became the Massa- 
chusetts Secretary. The next year a new school law 
was enacted, which a competent authority has called 
"the most advanced school law then enacted in any 
State." ^ In a few years reactionary influences abol- 
ished office of State superintendent, and the cause 
received a backset similar to that already seen in 
Connecticut. Gradually, however, more enlightened 
councils prevpiled, and in 1853 a long step forwa.rd 
was taken in the enactment of a new school law to 
which all subsequent laws have been only amendments. 
The history of no State shows the traces of foreign 
influence in its educational system more clearly than 
the history of Michigan. Omitting the French liabi- 
tans, the pioneers of Michigan were men mainly from 
New England, New York, and Ohio, and they carried 
with them the ideas then current in those States. In 
1835 the first State constitution was framed, when, 
most fortunately, a copy of Cousin's Report on Public 
Instruction in Prussict was put into the hands of the 
member of the convention whose duty it was to frame 
the educational article. The result was that this arti- 
cle, when it finally passed the convention, provided 
for a State superintendent of public instruction, a 
system of common schools and township libraries, 

1 Dr. E. E. TVIiite, " History of Public Education in Ohio for Fifty 
Years." — The Ohio Educational Monthly, August, 1897. 



286 HORACE MANN 

and for husbanding the resources that Congress had 
provided for a State university. The copy of the 
Cousin Report that wrought this beneficent work was 
the property of Eev. John D. Pierce/ a Congregational 
minister and ahimnus of Brown University, who also 
contributed his personal influence to the end in view. 
On the State's coining into the Union, Mr. Pierce be- 
came State Superintendent of Public Instruction, and 
devoted himself heart and soul for six years to the 
organization of the educational system of Michigan. 
It was greatly owing to his labors that this system, 
when finally completed, recognized the leading " Prus- 
sian ideas,'^ so called — elementary schools, high schools, 
and a university, all supported and supervised by the 
State. This system, and especially the State uni- 
versity, has exercised a profound influence upon the 
educational institutions of the younger States, par- 
ticularly of the West. 

But we cannot continue the enumeration of States ; 
the public school system has progressively overspread 
the country. Instead of two or three systems of State 
schools, as at the beginning of the century, there are 
now as many as there are States and organized Terri- 
tories. These systems present considerable diversities 
of organization, and still more of instruction; what 
we call the American System of Public Education is 
less homogeneous than the French system, or even the 
German ; but its cardinal features throughout all the 
States are, after all, practically the same. Not every 
State has a board of education, but every one has a 

1 A brief sketch of Mr. Pierce will be found in Barnard, The 
American Journal of Education, Vol. XV., p. 640. 



PKOGKESS OF COMMON SCHOOL EEVIVAL 287 

central executive educational authority that supervises 
more or less thoroughly the operation of the system. 
In respect to efficiency there are considerable differ- 
ences. Sometimes an American State superintendent 
of public instruction approaches a European minister 
of education in the powers and efficiency of his office, 
but much oftener he aj^proaches more nearly the status 
of the head of a bureau of information and statistics. 
The prevailing jealousy of centralization has, at this 
point, stood in the way of progress. There can be 
little doubt that we shall find it wise, as time goes on, 
to strengthen our central educational authorities. 

In respect, also, to local superintendence, the States 
present considerable divergency of practice. Nearly 
all of the Western States, for example, have estab- 
lished the county superintendency. New England, on 
the other hand, clinging closely to town government, 
has found no place for such an officer. Local saperin- 
tendence is undoubtedly one of the problems of the 
future. 

The most phenomenal fact pertaining to the public 
school movement is the proportions to which it has 
attained. The statistics have swollen to dimensions 
that would have amazed Horace Mann and his com- 
panions could they have anticipated them. All the 
agencies of im;^rovement in which he trusted have far 
outgrown his wildest expectation. When he laid 
down his office in 1848, the expenditure for common 
schools in Massachusetts was $749,943; in 1896 it 
was $11,829,191. At the first of these dates there 
were 165,132 pupils enrolled in the summer schools, 
and 185,000 in the winter schools ; at the second date 



288 HORACE MANN 

the number of pupils enrolled in the schools during 
the year was 424,353. In 1848 there were 2424 men 
teachers and 5510 women teachers, a total of 7924. 
In 1896 the corresponding figures were 1078 men and 
11,197 women, or 12,275 in all. These figures would 
be still more impressive if we could eliminate the dupli- 
cates from the number of pupils and teachers given 
for the earlier period. In 1896 the total value of 
school property was ^36,780,000 ; the average length 
of the school year was 177 days ; the average expendi- 
ture per pupil $63.78, while the pupils of legal school 
age in private schools were but 13.65 per cent of those 
in the public schools. In place of three small Normal 
schools were ten large ones. Instead of there being 
but few more than 200 teachers in the State who 
were constantly engaged in teaching, as in 1837, a 
very large majority of the teachers employed in the 
public schools could fairly be styled professional 
teachers. The population of the State increased from 
994,514 in 1850 to 2,238,943 in 1890. Horace Mann 
interested himself greatly in schoolhouses and school 
grounds ; could he revisit the earth he would be grateful 
as well as astonished to see the progress that has been 
made, not only in Massachusetts, but all over the country. 
For the nation at large we do not possess the materials 
to enable us to make a similar statistical comparison. 
It is sufficient to say that, if the rate of growth from 
1892 to 1896 shall be maintained four years longer, 
the public schools of the country will enter upon the 
twentieth century with more than 15,500,000 pupils 
enrolled, more than 426,000 teachers, and an annual 
expenditure exceeding $212,000,000. 



PROGRESS OF COMMON SCHOOL REVIVAL 289 

These statistics are not presented merely because 
they show the extraordinary growth of public educa- 
tion; they show also the enormous effort and cost of 
any serious attempt at national education in an exten- 
sive country. The proposition to educate the whole 
people is a modern idea, and to realize it, even in the 
imperfect ma.nner seen at present, is an undertaking 
the magnitude of which few men have adequately con- 
sidered. No nation of the past or present has equalled 
the United States in the magnitude of its educational 
budget. 

Mr. Mann saw, as all discerning men of his time 
saw, that slavery was the most formida^bie barrier to 
the educational progress of the United States. At the 
South it was practically insuperable so long as slavery 
existed. Intelligent men cannot be held as property, 
bought and sold like cattle. There was, therefore, no 
safety for the peculiar institution of the South, unless 
the slaves were rigidly excluded from all educational 
adva.ntages. Moreover, their rigid exclusion led natu- 
rally to the placing of a low estimate upon popular 
education, even for the white population. Some South- 
ern statesmen, as Mr. Jefferson, strove to found good 
systems of public instruction, but they were never 
able to cope with existing conditions. The Civil War, 
by destroying slavery, opened the way for the com- 
mon school in fifteen States. E"or was this all; it 
also created the most urgent necessity for its intro- 
duction. The result is that, the last third of a cen- 
tury, the South has made a degree of educational 
]3rogress that would surprise us, were we not so in the 
habit of comparing it with the still greater progress 



290 HORACE MANN 

of the North. What is more, the war stimulated 
education powerfully at the North as well as at the 
South, because it was believed that the war was 
largely due to the Southern insufficiency of schools. 
The Franco-Prussian war also exerted an educational 
effect in the United States similar to that felt in 
European countries. 

Another phenomenal result of the Revival has been 
the productiveness of the American educational press 
— text-books, books of reference for schools and other 
supplementary material, and pedagogical publications. 
No people, perhaps, equals us in the production of 
school books ; attention, however, will be confined to 
the other branch of the subject. 

Since The Common School Journal a swarm of edu- 
cational journals has come from the press — weeklies, 
semi-monthlies, monthlies, and quarterlies, besides 
year books, pamphlets, and other occasional publica- 
tions. The newspapers and literary magazines of the 
country also accord increasing space to education. 
This great mass of printed matter ranges in value all 
the way from absolute worthlessness to the highest 
excellence. Most of the educational journals have 
been so ephemeral that the words of Scripture, " Truly 
their days are as grass,'^ have been applied to them. 
Some of the journals that have perished were dis- 
tinctly worthy of a happier fate than an early death, 
and most of them, we may believe, have been the 
means of accomplishing some good. As time length- 
ens, the journals that are strongest in ability and 
financial backing tend to hold, if not to assume, posi- 
tions of leadership. 



_PKOGRESS OF COMMON SCHOOL REVIVAL 291 

Incomparably the most valuable of all our educa- 
tional journals, and of all our pedagogical literature 
also, is The American Journal of Education, comprising 
tMrty-one octavo volumes of more than eight hundred 
pages each, edited and published in quarterly series by 
Dr. Henry Barnard, at Hartford, 1856-1881. Dr. Bar- 
nard had the good fortune to gather up and preserve a 
very large amount of rich material that would not have 
survived another generation. For the sources of Ameri- 
can educational history, his monumental work is indis- 
pensable to every scholar. As he turns its pages, the 
student finds little pertaining to the work itself to 
rufiie his national complacency but the unwelcome fact 
that it cost its editor and publisher, over and above 
the receipts, his private fortune of more than fifty 
thousand dollars. Mr. R. H. Quick, author of Educa- 
tional Reformers, had this fact in mind when he spoke 
of Dr. Barnard's self-sacrificing labor as having given 
to the English language an educational literature. Tlie 
American Journal of Education is, no doubt, the most 
valuable publication of the kind existing to-day in 
any language. 

Of books, much the same must be said as of jour- 
nals, only no American writer has produced an educar 
tional book that for a moment takes rank with Dr. 
Barnard's magnum opus. As a class, the books pro- 
duced have been almost as exohemeral as the periodi- 
cals.^ Much the most valuable of the early books was 
David P. Page's Tlieory and Practice of Teaching — 
a work that has been more widely circulated than any 
competitor, that is still read with profit by teachers, 
1 See The American Journal of Education, Vol. I., p. 700. 



292 HORACE MANN 

and that, perliaps, better deserves to be denominated 
a classic than the work of any other American writer. 

At first our educational literature was so thoroughly 
practical that even the '' theory " which figures in the 
traditional " theory and practice " was nothing but the 
reflective side of art. For example, the index to one of 
the current editions of Page's work has four references 
under the word " consciousness " ; but in every case the 
word is used in a loose popular sense, never in a scientific 
one. While we are not likely to lose this practical ele- 
ment from our pedagogical literature, since the vast 
majority of teachers need it and it is congruous with the 
JSTational genius, still it is encouraging that our stu- 
dents and writers are entering heartily into the scien- 
tific movement that is so characteristic of the time. 
Especial mention may be made of the laboratory psy- 
chology and child study. In the mean time, much of 
the best foreign thought, and particularly German 
thought, has been domesticated in good English trans- 
lations. Moreover, the number of those who are able 
to consult the original sources is rapidly increasing. 
The day is long past when German type cannot be 
found within easy reach of Boston, or even when 
there is only one book shop in that city that keeps 
Erench and German books on sale.^ 

The public school system has taken a peculiarly 
strong hold of the West. The way was clear and 
the need was great. Eor two generations the public 
schools have been growing up in the new States, side 

1 Dr. A. P. Peabody, Harvard Reminiscences, pp. 117, 118. T. 
W. Higginson, "Cheerful Yesterdays," Atlantic Mo7ithly , JsLnuarj, 
1897, p. 59. 



PROGRESS OF COMMON SCHOOL REVIVAL 293 

by side with tlieir otlier civil institutions. As a con- 
sequence, private schobls, whether elementary or sec- 
ondary, and denominational colleges play a smaller 
part in the education of the Western people than they 
play in the old States of the East. 

A peculiarly interesting topic is the reciprocal in- 
fluence of the East and the West u]3on each other in 
the grand educational march. The influence of the 
East is a familiar story, but not much has been heard 
of the influence of the A¥est. The older school sys- 
tems of the East have been more or less copied at the 
West: tlie Revival was first distinctly seen and felt 
there. The early advocates of the Revival, as Horace 
Mann, Henry Barnard, and others, often visited the 
Western States to aid the cause with their counsel and 
inspiration. Eastern money has flowed in rich streams 
to found Western colleges and seminaries. Eastern 
teachers in grep.t numbers have found in the West 
fields of usefulness. Horace Mann died the president 
of an Ohio college, and Henry Barnard, after refus- 
ing in succession the headship of the State Universi- 
ties of Indiana and Michigan, accepted, and for a 
short time held, the Chancellorship of the University 
of Wisconsin. All these things the West, at the 
same time that she asserts her own distinct educa- 
tional history and existence, gratefully acknowledges. 
Upon the whole the indirect influence of the East 
upon the West has been greater than the direct. The 
men and women of the East who flocked to the West 
to find homes for themselves and their children, 
carrying their familiar ideas and institutions with 
them, did more to shape educational development than 



294 HORACE MANN 

all tlie systems and teachers that ever crossed the 
Allegheny Mountains.^ The Western educational sys- 
tems have been developed by capable men under 
new conditions, and it would be strange indeed if 
they were only tame imitations of the older Eastern 
ones. On the contrary, they contain original elements 
of the greatest value. The State university, for ex- 
ample, not only rounds out the Western systems, but it 
more or less fashions and animates the grades of in- 
struction that lie below it. It is most important to 
observe, also, that the absence of tradition and con- 
vention, and the freedom of Western society — the 
fact that the ground was unencumbered — has en- 
abled Western educators to give a significance to 
the local superintendency and to the public high 
school that Eastern educators have not always been 
able to attain. Withal, Western teachers and West- 
ern schools are marked by the vigor and enthusiasm 
of the Western peo]_3le. The original features of the 
Western systems have reacted upon the East; but 
more important forces have been the use of Western 
books and journals, the influence of Western example, 
and the work of such Western teachers and superin- 
tendents as have gone to serve in the East. 

1 The history of the various societies organized or assisted at 
the East for the purpose of promoting education at the West is of 
especial interest. Mention may he made of the Board of National 
Popular Education, having its headquarters at Cincinnati, Ohio, the 
function of which was to prepare and send women teachers to the 
West. This Board was under the executive management of ex- 
Governor William Slade of Vermont, and in the eleven years of its 
history it sent out no fewer than four hundred and eighty-one 
teachers. — Barnard, The American Journal of Education, Vol. 
XV., pp. 271-275. 



PROGEESS OF COMMON SCHOOL REVIVAL 295 

We have already marked the fact that modern 
education is nationa,! and democratic. It is in part a 
cause and in part an effect of the great democratizing 
movement of modern times. How solicitous Mr. Mann 
was that the American common school should be a 
real people's school^ we have also considered. He 
saWj as all discerning men must now see, that for 
an American State to support public schools for the 
poor only, such as the pauper schools, was a stigma 
on our civilization ; nay, more, that it was a disease in 
our vitals. Accordingly, the hope of doing something 
to diffuse and carry out the democratic theory of 
public instruction was one of the causes that drew 
him to the Secretary's office in 1837. Through the 
school he hoped to strengthen and perpetuate the 
republic. Along this line great progress has been 
made in fifty years; the pauper school has disap- 
peared, and it is no longer considered a reproach for 
a man in the better walks of life to send his child to 
a public school. At present, perhaps, this school is 
the most democratic of our institutions. Moreover, the 
present magnitude of the system depends upon this 
condition being maintained; while the public school 
can be at once national and democratic only when 
it is made what Horace Mann strove to make it, — 
the best school possible. 

The beneficial effect of the fact last stated it would 
be hard to overestimate. Consider the character of 
our population, what a medley it is ! Horace Mann 
could hardly have anticipated a day when the looms 
of Lowell would be tended almost exclusively by 
laborers of foreign birth or extraction, or a day when 



296 HORACE MANN 

the Irishman and the French Canadian would till and 
own the lands of the Puritans. While our people are 
divided in so many respects, their children, to a very- 
great degree, meet and mingle in the public school 
houses. It is not only possible, but easy, to exagger- 
ate the benefits of school education in comparison with 
hereditary character, or the formative influence of the 
home and society at large ; but it is certainly not easy 
to exaggerate the value of the public schools as labora- 
tories of the national life. If the American people 
ever become measurably homogeneous, this achieve- 
ment will be largely the work of the schools. 

It is almost unnecessary to say that the schools 
never could have been made democratic without their 
being made also free. In but few States had this end 
been gained in 1848. The school bill, or rate bill, put 
upon the school a mark similar to that imposed by the 
name "pauper school," but less odious. This form of 
tuition-charge was not abolished in Ohio until 1853, 
and in New York not until 1867. But now, happily, 
it has either disappeared altogether, or has retired into 
very obscure corners. Mr. Mann's contention that the 
property of the State should educate the youth of the 
State is a settled policy. 

In the minds of educators two ideas have long been 
associated, — gratuitous instruction and compulsory in- 
struction. In 1840 Mr. Mann did not think compul- 
sion either desirable or practicable. In 1847 he had 
so far changed his mind as to admit its necessity in 
the cases of those persons who are insensible to the 
education of their children. Were he living now, he 
would be a full convert to coercion. Experience has 



PROGEESS OF COMMON SCHOOL REVIVAL 297 

conclusively shown that " the starry lights of know- 
ledge/'^ hung along the avenue of life, which so fired 
his imagination, will not lure all the children of the 
land into schools, either public or private. Indiffer- 
ence or selfishness often overrides parental affection 
and the suggestions of prudential reason. More and 
more our educators and legislators are coming to see 
these facts. No American State has yet reached the 
happy condition of the better educated States of Ger- 
many, where illiteracy is practically unknown ; but in 
several of the States both public opinion and the law 
now recognize the fact that compulsion must be brought 
to re-enforce gratuity. No community has made greater 
progress in this direction than Mr. Mann's own State 
of Massachusetts, where the law provides that the 
local school committee, in order to satisfy itself that 
the pupils in private schools or church schools are re- 
ceiving as good an education as they would receive in 
the public schools, shall exercise a certain supervision 
over them. Other States will be obliged to take the 
same step in order to make their compulsory laws 
effective. Akin to this legislation are the constitu- 
tional provisions found in some States, that deny the 
right of suffrage to men who are wholly illiterate. 

It has been found that the free school involves 
some things that were not at first generally taken 
into the account. It was then assumed that if the 
State furnished the schoolhouse and furniture, the 
apparatus and library, the janitor's service, and the in- 
struction, this would amply meet its obligations. Soon, 
however, it was discovered that the so-called "indi- 
gent " pupils must also be provided with books. Next, 



298 HORACE MANN 

it was perceived that this arrangement implied some 
reflection upon the pupils thus assisted. Finally, the 
question was raised whether the logic of the free 
school does not involve free books as well as free 
tuition. Accordingly in some States, and in cities 
in other States, pupils — at least, pupils below the 
high school — are supplied with books. Experience 
has shown that free books are a measure of economy, 
and that they tend to correct some evils that have 
sprung up in connection with the introduction and 
use of text-books. Naturally, therefore, there is a 
steady growth of conviction in that direction. 

The educational revival in the United States should 
be still more closely connected with what had already 
been done in Europe. The Renaissance gave the world 
an exclusive type of education; it might prevail the 
world over, but, as respects classes, it could never 
become general. Exotic culture means culture for the 
few, and the Humanists held stoutly to G-reek and 
Latin, and looked with disfavor upon vernacular lan- 
guages. Humanism meant literary education in for- 
eign tongues. Even Luther, man of the people as 
he was, placed the teaching of German after Latin, 
Greek, and Hebrew. The potency of modern national 
education lay in the Eealistic movement. Realism 
in essence was as democratic as Humanism was aris- 
tocratic. It was Comenius and his successors who, 
putting the vernacular in the schools, and resorting 
to Nature for education-material, made popular edu- 
cation possible. Their pedagogical ideas harmonized 
completely with the spirit of modern society. In par- 
ticular, Pestalozzi and Erobel, by emphasizing sense- 



PROGRESS OF COMMON SCHOOL REVIVAL 299 

intuition, the teaching of the masses, and the unity 
of man's nature, became the immediate and necessary 
precursors of Horace Mann, his coadjutors and suc- 
cessors. 

From an early period in the history of the Common 
School Eevival, German influence has been steady, 
strong, and wholesome. It has been derived from the 
introduction of German pedagogical literature, from 
the frequent visits of our pedagogists and teachers 
to German schools, from the attendance of our 
scholars upon German universities, and the not in- 
considerable number of German teachers Avho have 
found employment on this side of the Atlantic. With- 
out this influence, our schools would have moved in 
much the same direction that they have gone, but 
less uniformly and rapidly. 

The highly scholastic character of the old educa- 
tion, and the effort that Mr. Mann made to carry 
instruction into more fruitful fields, has been recog- 
nized on preceding pages. In the controversy with 
the Boston masters, Mr. Mann said the two great 
needs of the American teacher were emancipation 
from the text-book and the employment of oral in- 
struction. In objective teaching, laboratory work, 
and illustrative methods, great progress has been 
made since that day. Manual training is calling out 
more and more of the public interest, not so much 
because it is thought to fit boys for trades, as because 
it is believed strongly to develop the mind and char- 
acter of children. The kindergarten, passing beyond 
the experimental stage of private patronage, is gain- 
ing a firm footing in the public schools ; firmer, per- 



300 HORACE MANN 

liapSj than in any other country, and certainly firmer 
than in the country of Frobel. More than this, the 
influence of FrobePs ideas upon primary education is 
much farther reaching than the direct influence of 
the kindergarten. In part, the change in respect to 
method is so great that some judicious pedagogists 
think it not untimely to insist that the book has a 
status in the school, and to emphasize the printed 
page as a contribution to human cultivation. 

The expansion of the public school course of study 
is an interesting subject. When we ta,ke in the high 
school, as well as the elementary grades, this expan- 
sion has been extraordinary. To the three E,'s, and 
one or two other subjects, that made up the old pub- 
lic school course, languages, literature, mathematics, 
science, and history have been added, until the high 
school graduate of to-day receives an education fully 
equal in range to that furnished not so very long ago 
by the colleges. Some competent judges look upon 
the present course of study as overgrown and con- 
gested. Still the fact remains, that the American boy 
who enters college at the age of eighteen or nineteen 
is two years behind the German or French boy of the 
same age who is looking to the university. One of 
the questions of the time is how this interval can be 
remedied. We hear much of shortening and enrich- 
ing the elementary school curriculum; the experi- 
ment of bringing some of the high school studies, as 
Latin, German, and Geometry, into the lower grades, 
which is now being tried in many schools, thoughtful 
teachers and educators are watching with peculiar 
interest. 



PROGRESS OF COMMON SCHOOL REVIVAL 301 

In respect to religious teaching in tlie public school, 
opinion oscillates between two extremes. The dog- 
matician condemns the school because it excludes 
formal religious teaching; the secularist contends 
that even the reading of the Bible shall be prohibited. 
Practice moves through a much smaller arc. The 
Massachusetts law thus affirms the substance of the 
rule for which Horace Mann contended : " The school 
committee shall require the daily reading in the 
public schools of some portions of the Bible without 
note or oral comment." The section adds a further 
provision that, in spirit, is of general currency : 
" But they shall not require a scholar, whose parent 
or guardian informs the teacher in writing that he 
has conscientious scruples against it, to read from 
any particular version, or to take any personal part in 
the reading ; nor shall they direct to be purchased or 
used in the public schools school books calculated to 
favor the tenets of any particular sect of Christians." 
Several States follow Massachusetts in requiring por- 
tions of the Bible to be read, but some formally deny 
such reading, I^o State permits denominational in- 
struction in its public schools. In Ohio the whole ques- 
tion is within the competence of the board of education. 
The Supreme Court of Wisconsin has held that the 
use of the Bible in the schools is a violation of the 
State constitution. Upon the whole, the discretion 
of the teacher has more to do in determining whether 
the Bible shall be read than any other influence. So 
it cannot be said that the religious question is finally 
settled. There are those who think the French solu- 
tion will ultimately commend itself to public favor, 



302 HORACE MANN 

viz. : A distinctly secular or civil school, with, a holi- 
day in the middle of the week that will allow pupils 
who desire to do so to go to the minister or the priest 
for religious instruction. 

Another form of the sectarian question assumed 
prominence, and has, apparently, been decisively 
answered. The answer is the denial of the public 
funds or credit to any and all sectarian educational 
establishments, which, in a majority of States at least, 
is affected by means of a constitutional provision. 
For example, the revised constitution of New York 
provides: "Neither the State nor any subdivision 
thereof shall use its property or credit or any public 
money, or authorize or permit either to be used, 
directly or indirectly, in aid or maintenance, other 
than for examination or inspection, of any school or 
institution of learning wholly or in part under the 
control or direction of any religious denomination, or 
in which any denominational tenet or doctrine is 
taught." And similar provisions are found in many 
State constitutions. 

Nothing caused the early advocates of educational 
reform in Massachusetts keener regret than the decay 
of the grammar school — the ancient secondary school 
of New England. To effect its restoration, in fact 
if not in form, was one of the principal motives of 
the new movement. The restoration came in the 
public high school, which performs the double duty 
of fitting many candidates for the college and uni- 
versity, but a much larger number for real life. The 
question has arisen whether one school can well 
answer both these purposes ; whether, in a word, the 



PROGRESS OF COMMON SCHOOL REVIVAL 303 

best school for the student fitting for college is also 
the best school for the pupil who goes at once to 
work or to business. Passing by the theoretical 
question, two or three things seem clear. One is 
that the people will insist upon the State's furnishing 
college preparation, at least in those States that have 
State universities. The second is that the public 
high school will continue to be employed for the 
same double purpose as at present. Still a third is 
that educators will be compelled to consider more 
closely than hitherto the very important question, 
whether colleges Ptud universities require to be more 
closely adjusted to practical life, and if so, how this 
adjustment shall be made. How far do the two 
classes of students found in the high schools need 
the same studies ? How far can the same work be 
made to answer the purposes of both of them ? The 
public high school will soon be in a position, if it 
is not already, to decline to take the law from the 
institutions of higher learning. It will rather be in 
a position, we will not say to dictate the law to those 
institutions, but to meet them in the freest confer- 
ence on common interests, with the fullest conviction 
that its status and requirements will receive due 
recognition. But while the public high school will 
continue to perform the double office, it will certainly 
continue to be primarily what it now is, a final school 
for the many rather than a preparatory school for 
the few. What is more, all improvements in this 
school will render the public schools more worthy 
of the name long ago conferred upon them, "The 



304 HORACE MANN 

Peoi^le's Colleges." ^ In the mean time all the people 
must be convinced, and particularly those people who 
do not use it, that the high school ministers to the 
common good, since it tends strongly to raise the 
level of the average culture, and especially to improve 
the instruction of the elementary school. 

The early interest of the reformers in voluntary 
associated effort has been remarked in the proper 
place. This interest has grown until the present 
time. The National Educational Association, which 
held its thirty-sixth annual meeting in July, 1897, but 
the beginnings of which must be sought still farther 
back, is a powerful organization gathering its members 
from every State in the Union and counting them by 
the thousand. Next come the great sectional organi- 
zations, as the Southern Association and the American 
Institute of Instruction. These are followed by the 
State associations, and these again by the local organi- 
zations of various names and kinds. Composed, as 
they are, of the most active and progressive members 
of the teaching body, these associations and societies, 
through their meetings and publications, besides their 
internal effect, exert no little influence upon public 
opinion. Their publications form a considerable part 
of the yearly burden of educational literature. While, 
as a rule, these organizations are open and free to 
teachers of all grades and description, and their 
membership is quite heterogeneous, still their presid- 

1 This name was first conferred, it is believed, by E. D. Mans- 
field of Cincinnati, in an address before the College of Teachers, 
1834. See Mansfield's Memoirs of the Life and Services of Daniel 
Drake, M.D. Cincinnati, 1855, p. 244, note. 



PEOGEESS OF COMMON SCHOOL EEVIVAL 305 

ing genius is that of the public school. The jSTational 
Association has taken seriously in hand the work of 
educational investigation, as witness the reports of 
its committees on secondary, elementary, and rural 
schools.^ 

We have already had occasion to observe the great 
relative increase of the urban population of the coun- 
try that began to declare itself about the time that the 
Common School Eevival got well under way. In 1890 
nearly one-third of the people of the United States 
lived in concentrations of population of 8000 and 
upwards. This growth has affected education most 
profoundly. The cities own more than half the school 
property of the country, and expend nearly one-ha.lf 
of the school revenue, but they do not do a propor- 
tionate amount of teaching. The great disparity 
between the per cents of wealth and expenditure on 
the one hand, and the number of children taught on 
the other, is due in large part to the greater cost, 
other things being equal, of urban education. But 
this is by no means an adequate explanation ; in some 
part the disparity represents the superior advantages 
that the children of the city, as a whole, enjoy ; better 
schoolhouses and appliances, better teachers, and 
longer terms of attendance. In rural districts where 
the population is sparse and the schools small, the 
disparity is very great indeed. It is a very sig- 
nificant fact that in large districts the popula- 
tion is declining; thus more than four hundred 

1 Report of the Committee on Secondary School Studies, etc. , 1893 ; 
Report of the Committee of Fifteen on Elementary Schools, 1895; 
Report of the Committee of Twelve on Rural Schools, 1897. 

X 



306 HORACE MANN 

counties, or five times as many as there are in the 
State of Ohio, showed such a decline in the decade 
1880-1890. The policy established in New England 
at the middle of the last century, of abandoning the 
town as the school unit of administration and of divid- 
ing it into a number of small autonomous school dis- 
tricts, which has been generally adopted, is producing 
its necessary results. These evils were already appar- 
ent to Horace Mann in 1846, when he condemned the 
Massachusetts Act of 1789 as the most unfortunate 
piece of school legislation in the history of the State, 
and strove to consolidate the schools, both in respect 
to administration and attendance. The public is now 
awakening to the existence of the same evils ; men are 
inquiring concerning the abolition or consolidation of 
school districts, town or township administration, and 
the concentration of pupils in sufficient numbers to 
make good schools possible ; in other words, they are 
asking whether the peculiar advantages of the urban 
school can be introduced into the country, and, if so, to 
what extent and in what way. Already important re- 
forms have been affected in a number of States, and 
the signs of the times lead us to expect that they will 
be accomplished on a still more extended scale. In 
fact, there is much reason to believe that the new cen- 
tury will see rural school reform take its place among 
the foremost educational questions of the time.^ 

Mention has been made of the land grants that 
Congress has made to the public land States for com- 
mon schools. In all, these grants amount to about 

1 See The Report of the Committee of Twelve on Rural Schools, 
the National Educational Association, 1897. 



PROGRESS OF COMMON SCHOOL REYIYAL 307 

70j000,000 acres. Texas, also, lias liberally endowed 
her scliools in the same way. These dedications, 
which are perpetual in character, and so constitute 
permanent endowments, have materially influenced 
the history of National education. First, the policy 
of the government, which was foreshadowed as early 
as 1785, stimulated the non-public land States of the 
East and South to create similar endowments out 
of their own resources. At present, a large ma- 
jority of the States have permanent school funds, 
some of them amounting to more than ^10,000,000 
each. In the second place, these endowments have 
influenced educational development in two ways. 
They hastened the growth in the body politic, and 
particularly in the West, of a distinct educational 
consciousness, and also facilitated the provision and 
maintenance of schools. The men who established 
the endowment policy appear to have thought that 
the income from the school lands within the several 
States would either greatly ease taxation for school 
purposes or make it altogether unnecessary. At least 
the endowments would serve as a balance-wheel in 
the educational machinery of the State. To only a 
limited extent have these expectations been fulfilled. 
It is probable that the present funds arising from the 
school lands are quite as large as the Fathers sup- 
posed they would be, at least in the more fortunate 
States; but the cost of public education has so far 
outgrown all early expectations that the income from 
the funds, in most cases, is a mere pittance in com- 
parison. For the year 1895, 1896 the total school reve- 
nues of all the States, not including balances or pro- 



308 HORACE MANN 

ceeds of bond notes, were $181,394,000, of wMch. only 
$7,646,000 was derived from permanent funds. It is, 
therefore, perfectly clear that public education in the 
United States has far outgrown all present or pro- 
spective endowments. There is no objection to Massa- 
chusetts, New Jersey, and other States augmenting 
their school funds, if they wish to do so; it is the 
plain duty of all States now in the possession of such 
funds to husband them closely; but it is clear as 
demonstration that the public schools must depend 
less and less upon permanent funds and more and 
more upon public taxation. Once more, the perma- 
nent school funds have sometimes proved to be an 
injury rather than a benefit, causing the people to 
depend unduly upon them and to deny the schools 
needed support from taxation. It is admitted that, 
for a time, Connecticut's famous school fund was a 
curse to the people of the State, and there is reason 
to fear that younger States are repeating her exam.- 
ple.^ The university lands have, relatively speaking, 

iRev. S. J. May, writing of the state of things in Connecti- 
cut in 1822, says : " The income of the fund being enough to pay all 
the teachers throughout the State at low rates, their wages were 
fixed at those rates ;4ind the people in most districts utterly refused 
to subscribe, or to be taxed, to increase the compensation for 
teaching. Moreover, as the fountain whence the supply came be- 
longed alike to all, each man endeavored to get the accommodation 
of a puddle for his chickens as near as might be to his own door. 
A new district, therefore, was 'set off,' wherever the number of 
children in a neighborhood was large enough to give a pretext for 
one ; and another division of the income helped to keep the wages 
too low to command the services of competent teachers." — The 
Revival of Education, etc., Syracuse, 1855. See also Report of the 
Committee of Tioelve on Rural Schools, pp. 24, 25, 126, 127, for full 
information on the subject. 



PROGEESS or COMMON SCHOOL REVIVAL 309 

done more good and less harm than the common 
school lands. 

We have already remarked the satisfaction with 
which the men of New England^ early in the century, 
regarded their common schools. We might also have 
remarked the severe shock that was given to such as 
could feel it, when the fact was brought home to them 
that their boasted schools were inferior to the best 
schools in the Old World. ^ We may now ask what is 
the distance between our schools and foreign schools 
to-day as compared with what it was at the beginning 
of the Revival. Have we shortened or lengthened the 
interval ? The facts are that we have shortened it, 
but that we are still in the rear, as before. Our best 
schools are as good, no doubt, as the best of Germany, 
but we have no system of schools that is equal to the 
Saxon or the Prussian system. While our educational 
complacency is less marked than it was, it is still a 
considerable obstacle to our progress. 

It is often charged that we Americans, in our appre- 
ciation of the material side of life, estimate too highly 
the practical elements of education. The best parts 
of mental cultivation, these critics say, dwindle in 
comparison with our prodigious educational statistics. 
It is sometimes said that our schools run altogether 
to brick and mortar. These criticisms touch the 
national character on its weak side. It would be 

iRev. S. J. May, speaking in 1855 of this painful revolution, 
says: "I well remember how stung we were by the unfavorable 
comparison. We had heard from our childhood and had grown up 
in the assurance that, as free schools originated in New England, 
so they were better cared for here than in any other part of the 
world." — The Revival of Education, etc., p. 13. 



310 HORACE MANN 

strange, indeed, if our educational development were 
not congruous with, our development considered as a 
whole. Still, it is far from true that this develop- 
ment has been wholly one-sided. On the other hand, 
it has been measurably harmonious, all things con- 
sidered. Since 1837 we have made great progress 
along all the lines of growth, — school grounds and 
buildings, apparatus and libraries, school books a.nd 
courses of study, methods of teaching and modes of 
discipline. Much still remains to be done in all these 
directions. But all the progress that we have made 
in the past has not changed our central educational 
question. That is still what it was in the days of 
Carter and Mann, Olmstead and Kingsley. And such 
this question promises to remain. In fact, it is deter- 
mined, in the long run, by the very nature of educa- 
tion. We can imagine a state of things as existing 
that for a time will render the material factors of 
education of more pressing interest than the spiritual 
ones. But that is an abnormal state of affairs. There 
is little probability that we shall see it actually exist- 
ing in the United States. The provision of good 
teachers will be the vital educational question of the 
twentieth century, as it has been of the nineteenth 
century. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 

The titles here given have been selected from the 
Bibliogrcvphy of Horace Mann, prepared by Mr. B. 
Pickman Mann and published in the Report of the 
Commissioner of Education, 1895-96, vol. i., pp. 897- 
927. While incomplete, Mr. Maifn's list contains 
more than seven hundred titles. A few duplications 
will be found below and a few political titles, chiefly 
Mr. Mann's speeches in Congress. The attempt to dis- 
tinguish between Mr. Mann's own titles and those of 
other writers has not been fully successful. The 
titles relating to the controversy with Boston school- 
masters and religious sectaries have been given in 
footnotes. Chaps. YIII, IX, and are not here repeated. 

MR. MANN'S TITLES 

Reports of Secretary of Board of Education. Mr. Mann's re- 
ports appeared annually, together with the reports of the 
Board of Education, 1838-49, and were published by the 
State. 

Report of Secretary of Board of Education on schoolhouses, supple- 
mentary to first annual report, 1838. Published by the State. 

Abstracts of Massachusetts school returns, 1838-49. Published 
by the State. 

Common School Journal, The. Boston. Marsh, Capen, 
Lyon, and Webb; Wm. B. Fowle and N. Capen; Wm. 
B. Fowle, 1839-48. 

Lectures and annual reports on education. Mann, Mary, editor, 
"Life and Works of Horace Mann." In five volumes. 
Vol. ii. Cambridge. Published for the editor, 1867. 
31] 



312 BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Annual reports of the Secretary of the Board of Education of 
Massachusetts for the years 1837-38, including the first annual 
report of the Board of Education, to which are prefixed lect- 
ures on education. "Life and Works of Horace Mann," 
vol. ii. Boston. Lee and Shepard, 1891. 

Annual reports on education. Mann, Mary, editor. "Life 
and Works of Horace j\Iann." In five volumes. Vol. iii. 
Boston. Horace B. Fuller, 1868. 

Annual reports of the Secretary of the Board of Education of 
Massachusetts fqx the years 1839-44. " Life and Works 
of Horace Mann," vol. iii. Boston. Lee and Shepard, 
1891. 

Annual reports of the Secretary of the Board of Education of 
Massachusetts for the years 1845-48, and oration delivered 
before the authorities of the city of Boston, July 4, 1842. 
" Life and Works of Horace Mann," vol. iv. Boston. Lee 
and Shepard, 1891. 

Mann, Horace. Educational writings of Horace Mann, con- 
taining contributions to The Common School Journal and 
addresses of the president of Antioch College, with an appen- 
dix containing a review of Horace Mann's works and writ- 
ings, by Felix Pecaut. " Life and Works of Horace Mann," 
vol. V. Boston. Lee and Shepard, 1891. 

Lectures on education. Boston. William B. Fowle, 1848. 

Two lectures on intemperance. 1. The effects of intemperance 
on the poor and ignorant. 2. The effects of intemperance 
on the rich and educated. Syracuse. Hall, Mills, and Com- 
pany, 1852. 

A lecture on the best mode of preparing and using .spelling-books y 
delivered before the American Institute of Instruction, Aug.^ 
1841. Boston. William D. Ticknor, 1841. 

Lectures on various subjects, comprising: Thoughts for a young 
man. Poor and ignorant. Rich and educated. The powers 
and duties of women. Demands of the age on colleges. Bac- 
calaureate address. !N"ew York. Fowler and Wells, 1859. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY i3l3 

The necessity of education in a republican government. Ameri- 
can Institute of Instruction. Lectures delivered . . . at Port- 
land, Aug. 30 and 31, 1844. Boston. Ticknor, 1845. 

A few thoughts for a young man. A lecture delivered before 
the Boston Mercantile Library Association on its 29th anni- 
versary. Boston. Ticknor, Reed, and Fields, 1850. 

Need of a uniform and comprehensive systeyn of education. 
Proceedings of the national convention of the friends of pub- 
lic education, held in Philadelphia, Oct. 17, 18, and 19, 1849. 
Philadelphia. E. C. and J. Biddle, 1849. 

Schoolteachers and superintendents. Convention of teachers 
and superintendents of public schools, held at Philadelphia, 
Oct. 17, 18, and 19, 1849. "American Journal of Edu- 
cation," 1873, vol. xxiv. 

Baccalaureate delivered at Antioch College, 1857. New York. 
Fowler and Wells, 1857. 

An oration delivered before the authorities of the city of Boston, 
July 4, 1842, by Horace Mann, Secretary of the Massachu- 
setts Board of Education. Boston. Wm. B. Fowle and 
Nahum Capen, and Tappan and Dennet, 1842. 

Lecture on education. Boston. Marsh, Capen, Lyon, and 
Webb, 1840. 

A lecture on special preparation a prerequisite to teaching, 1838. 
"American Journal of Education," Sept., 1863, vol. xiii. 

Remarks at the dedication of the state normal schoolhouse at 
Bridgewater, Aug;rl9, 1846. "American Journal of Edu- 
cation," Dec, 1858, vol. v. 

Demands of the age on colleges.' Speech delivered by the Hon. 
Horace Mann, president of Antioch College, before the 
Christian convention at its quadrennial session, held at 
Cincinnati, Ohio, Oct. 5, 1854. New York. Fowler and 
WeUs, 1857. 

Report and resolutions on the " code of honor," falsely so called ; 
also report and resolutions on intemperance, profanity, and 
the use of tobacco in schools and colleges. Columbus, 1857. 



314 BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Anfioch College, Yellow Springs, Ohio. Dedication of Antioch 
College, and inaugural address of its president, Hon. Horace 
Mann, with other proceedings . Yellow Springs, Ohio. Dean, 
1854. 

A few thoughts on the powers and duties of looman. Two lect- 
ures. Syracuse. Hall, Mills, and Company, 1853. 

The college code of honor. Address to the students of Antioch 
College, Yelloiv Springs, Ohio, by Horace Mann, LL.D., presi- 
dent. "American Journal of Education," March, 1857, 
vol. iii. 

The teacher's motives. "American Journal of Education," 
June, 1864, vol. xiv. 

Twelve sermons, delivered at Antioch College. Boston. Tick- 
nor and Fields, 1860. 

Thoughts selected from the writings of Horace Mann. "I hold 
education to be an organic necessity of a human being." 
Horace Mann. Boston. H. B. Fuller and Company, 1867. 

In connection with Pliny Earle Chase, Mr. Mann 
prepared a series of text-books on arithmetic, bearing 
the following titles : 

Arithmetic, practically applied, for advanced pupils, and for 
private reference, designed as a sequel to any of the ordinary 
text-hooks on the subject. Philadelphia, 1850. 

The primary school arithmetic. Designed for beginners. Con- 
taining copious mental exercises, together loith a large number 
of examples for the slate. Elements of arithmetic, part first. 
Philadelphia, 1851. 

The grammar school arithmetic, containing much valuable com- 
mercial inforynation, together with a system of integral, deci- 
mal, and fractional arithmetic, so arranged as to dispense with 
many of the ordinary rules. 

On the right of Congress to legislate for the territories of the 
United States, and its duty to exclude slavery therefrom. 



BIBLIOGEAPHY 315 

Speech delivered in the House of Representatives, in committee 
of the ivhole, June 30, 1848. Washington, 1848. 

Slavery in the United States and the slave trade in the District 
of Columbia. Speech delivered in the House of Representa- 
tives, Feb. 23, 1849. Boston, 1849. 

Slavery in the territories and the consequences of the threatened 
dissolution of the Union. Speech delivered in the House of 
Representatives, Feb. 15, 1850. Washington, 1850. 

The Fugitive Slave Law. Speech delivered in the House of 
Representatives, in committee of the lohole on the state of the 
Union, Feb. 28, 1851. Washington, 1851. 

The institution of slavery. Speech delivered in the House of 
Representatives, Aug. 17, 1852. Washington, 1852. 

Letters on the extension of slavery into Ccdifornia and Neiv 
Mexico, and on the duty of Congress to provide the trial by 
jury for alleged fugitive slaves. Republished with notes. 
Washington, 1850. 

Slavery: Letters and speeches. Boston. B. B. Mussey and 
Company, 1851. 

TITLES RELATING TO MR. MAN:^r 

Atkinson, W. P. Life and loorks of Hoixice Mann. Edited 
by Mrs. Mary Mann. In five volumes. "Massachusetts 
Teacher," June, 1867, vol. xx. 

Barnard, H. Horace Mann. " American Journal of Educa- 
tion," Dec, 1858, vol. v., pp. 611-645. 

Barnard, H. List of publications by Horace Mann, LL.D. 
"American Journal of Education," Dec, 1858, vol. v., pp. 
651-652. 

Bowen, Francis. Mr. Mann and the teachers of the Boston 
schools. "North American Review," Jan., 1845, vol. Ix., 
pp. 224-246. 

Bristed, Charles Astor. Letter to the Hon. Horace Mann. 
New York, 1850. Kernot. Littell's "Living Age," July 
13, 1850, vol. xxvi., pp. 10-52. 



316 BIBLIOGEAPHY 

Chadwick, J. W. Horace Mann. "Nation," March 14, 1867, 
vol. iv., pp. 210-211. 

Coggeshall, W. T. Horace Mann. " Ohio Journal of Edu- 
cation," Sept., 1859, vol. viii., pp. 276-278. 

Coggeshall, W. T. Character and services of Horace Mann. 
An address before the Ohio Teachers' Association, at Newark, 
July 5, 1860. " Ohio Educational Monthly," Sept., 1860, 
vol. ix. 

Combe, G. Education in America: State of Massachusetts. 
" Edinburgh Review," July, 1841, vol. Ixxiii., pp. 486-502. 

Emerson, G. B. Massachusetts common school system. 
"North American Review," Jan., 1841, vol. lii., pp. 
148-191. 

Emerson, G. B. Ohservations on a pamphlet, entitled ^^ Re- 
marks on the seventh annual report of the Hon. Horace Mann, 
Secretary of the Massachusetts Board of Education." Bos- 
ton, Sept., 1844. 

Fay, Eli. Remarks made at the funeral of Hon. Horace Mann, 
president of Antioch College. " Gospel Herald." Dayton, 
Ohio, Aug. 20, 1859, vol. xvi., no. 16, p. 2. 

Gaufres, M. J. Horace Mann, p)romoteur de Vinstruction popu- 
laire aux Etats-Unis . . . Paris, 1884. 

Gaufres, M. J. Educateurs fran^ais et etrangers : Horace 
Mann, president du college d'Antioche. "Revue pedago- 
gique," 15 March, 1887, vol. x., no. 3, pp. 199-222. 

Gaufres, M. J. Educateurs frangais et etra^igers : Horace 
Mann, premier secretaire du conseil d'education du Massa- 
chusetts. Revue d'education du Massachusetts. " Revue 
pedagogique," 15 Dec. 1885, vol. vii., no. 12, pp. 524-544. 

Hadley, Amos. Horace Mann : His life and examp>le. Ameri- 
can Institute of Instruction : 5Qth annual meeting. Lectures 
. . . Newport, Rhode Island, July 7-10, 1885. Boston. 
Willard SmaU, 1886, pp. 199-229. 

Hall, E. B. The educator: Horace Mann. A discourse, 
preached on Sunday, Sept. ith, in the First Congregational 



BIBLIOGKAPHY 317 

Church, Providence. " Providence Journal," Sept. 13, 1859, 
vol. XXX., no. 217, p. 1. 

Harris, W. T. Horace Mann. " Educational Review," N. Y., 
vol. xii., no. 2. 

Hart, J. S. Horace Mann. " Princeton Review," 1886, vol. 
xxxviii., pp. 74-91. 

Horace Mann. Repaint of an educational tour in Germany 
and parts of Great Britain and Ireland, being part of the 
seventh annual report of Horace Mann, Esq., Secretary of the 
Board of Education, Mass., U. S., 1844, with preface and 
notes by W. B. Hodgson, principal of the Mechanics' Institu- 
tion, Liverpool. " Id viro bono satis esse docuisse qnod 
scierit." Quint, lib. xii., 11. London. Simpkin, Mar- 
shall, and Company. Liverpool. D. JNIarples, 1846. 

Horace Mann, formerly of Massachusetts, now president of 
Antioch College, at Yellow Springs, Greene County, Ohio. 
Livingston, J., "American portrait gallery" . . . N". Y., 
1854, vol. iii., part 3. 

Laboulaye, E. Cenno biografco sopra Orazio Mann. La 
donna (Bologna), 30 July, 1877, anno 9, serie 2, no. 298. 

Mann, Mary. Life of Horace Mann. By his wife. Boston. 
Walker, Fuller, and Company, 1865. 

Martin, G. H. Horace Mann and the revival of education in 
Massachusetts. "Educational Review," N". Y., May, 1893, 
vol. v., pp. 434-450. 

Martin, G. H. The evolution of the Massachusetts public school 
system. A historical sketch. "International Education 
Series," vol. xxix., N". Y. D. Appleton and Company, 
1894. 

Phelps, W. F. Horace Mann. "Chautauqua text-books," 
no. 14. N. Y. Phillips and Hunt. Cincinnati. Hitch- 
cock and Walden, 1879. 

Horace Mann's educational tour. " Chambers' Edinburgh 
Journal," May 23, 1846, vol. v., pp. 327-329. Littell's 
"Living Age," July 18, 1846, vol. x., pp. 105-107. 



S18 BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Horace Mann and George Peabody. " Rhode Island School- 
master," Sept., 1873, vol. xix., pp. 311-323. 

In Horace Mann's memory. Impressive exercises at the Normal 
College. Addresses by President Hunter, Mayor Strong, 
United States Education Commissioner Harris, and others. 
"New York Daily Tribune," May 5, 1896, vol. Ivi., no. 
1869, p. 2. 

Inauguration of the statue of Horace Mann, in the state-house 
grounds, Boston, Massachusetts, July 4, 1865, with addresses 
of Governor Andreio, John D. Philhrick, President Hill, Dr. 
S. G. Howe, and others. Boston. Walker, Fuller, and 
Company, 1865, with a photograph of the statue. 

Sabin, H. Horace Mann's country school. Read before the 
National Educational Association at Asbury Park, New Jer- 
sey, July 13, 1894. Des Moines, Iowa, 1894. 

Sabin, H. Extracts from the writings of Horace Mann. 
Prepared at the Department of Public Instruction. To 
he used in normal institutes and afterwards by teachers in 
their school work. Iowa, Department of Public Instructioyi. 
" Circular of Information," no. 5, 1896. Des Moines, 
1896. 

Saffi, Giorgina. Di Orazio Mann e delle sue idee suW educa- 
zione — a G. A. Beccari. La donna (Bologna), 30 July, 
1877, anno 9, serie 2, no. 298. 

Sarmiento, D. F. Vida de Horacio Mann. Sarmiento, D. F. 
Las escuelas . . . , N. Y., 1866. 

Sarmiento, D. F. Horacio Mann. Sarmiento, D. F. Las 
escuelas . . . , N. Y., 1866. 

Thurber, C. H. Horace Mann, the educator statesman. 
" University Record." Chicago, May 29, 1896, vol. i., no. 
9, pp. 161-165. 

Walker, J. B. Horace Mann. Life of Horace Mann. By 
his wife. Boston. Walker, Fuller, and Company, 1865. 
" Christian Examiner," July, 1865, vol. Ixxix. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 319 

Wells, C. F. Sketclies of phrenological biography. Horace 
Mann, LL.D. III. "Phrenological Journal" . . . April, 
1864, vol. xcvii., no. 4, pp. 197-201. 

Weston, J. B. Horace 3Iann. A vieic of his life and its mean- 
ing. A memorial address delivered at the unveiling of his 
monument at Antioch College, Yellow Springs, Ohio. New 
York. Fowler and Wells Company, 1887. 

Winship, Albert E. Horace Mann, the educator. Boston. 
New England Publishing Company, 1896. 

Education in Europe. 1. Seventh annual rejjort of Horace 
Mann, Esq., Secretary of the Board of Education in Massa- 
chusetts on the state of education in Europe. Boston, 1844. 
2. . . . " Southern Quarterly Review," Jan., 1845, vol. vii., 
pp. 1-74, especially pp. 1-55. 

Horace Manii. His Life and Work. Ossian H. Lang. 
New l^ork, 1893. 



INDEX 



Academician, The, 69, 70. 

Academies, in Mass., 17-19. 

Adams, C. F., quoted, 14, 15 note. 

Adams, John, on education in N. E., 
26. 

American Annals of Edueation 
and Instruction, The, 71. 

American Institute of Instruction, 
the, 67. 

American Journal of Edtocation, 
The (Mr. Wm. Kussell, editor), 
70. 

Antioch College, founding of, 242, 
243 ; Horace Mann, president of, 
243-247 ; opening of, 248, 249 ; 
courses of study at, 251, 252 ; co- 
educational, 252; receives persons 
of color as students, 253 ; discipline 
and moral training at, 253, 254; 
troubles at, 259-263 ; later history 
of, 265. 

B 

Bache, Pres. A. D., report to the trus- 
tees of Girard College, 65. 

Barnard, Dr. Henry, creates the 
Teachers' Institute, 136, 137; on 
Cyrus Pierce, 154; first secretary 
of Conn. Board of Education, 280- 
282 ; commissioner of common 
schools in R. I., 283 ; principal of 
Conn. Normal School, 283 ; editor 
and publisher of American Jour- 
nal of Education, 291. 

Bell, Dr. Andrew, in Ya., 35, 36; his 
monitorial system, 58, 59. 

Board of Education, the Mass., pro- 
visions of the law creating, 105, 106 ; 



origin of the measure, 106, 107 ; its 
utility, 107, 108 ; first composition 
of, 108, 109; first secretary of, 
elected, 109-111 ; opposition to, 126- 
130 ; attacks on, by religious secta- 
ries, 214, 215, 221; vindication of, 
by Mr. Mann, 222, 223. 

Boston schoolmasters, men of educa- 
tion and character, 183 ; aroused by 
seventh report, 184; Remarks of, 
185; Rejoinder of, 197, 198; four 
of, dismissed, 202. 

Brooks, Eev. Charles, advocates Nor- 
mal schools, 147, 158. 



Carter, J. G., on education in N, E., 
29, 30 ; birth and education, 52, 53 ; 
Letters of, on the free schools of 
N. E., 53 ; Essays of, on popular 
education, 54-56 ; outline of an in- 
stitution for the education of teach- 
ers, by, 55, 56 ; reviews of his writ- 
ings, 56; draws the bill creating 
Mass. State Board of Education, 106, 
107 ; member of first board, 109 ; 
considered for Secretary of Board, 
109, 110. 

Catechism, the Shorter, 33, 210, 211, 
217, 219. 

Christian Connection, the, found An- 
tioch College, 242 ; character of, 244, 
245, 260, 261, 263. 

Cincinnati, public schools of, organ- 
ized, 42, 43. 

Clergy, the, decline of educational in- 
fluence, 45, 211. 

Clinton, Gov. De "Witt, 40 ; recom- 
mends a teachers' seminary, 57, 58 ; 



321 



322 



INDEX 



recommends district school libra- 
ries, 131. 

Clinton, Gov. Geo., on common 
schools, 39. 

College of professional teachers, 67-69. 

Collegiate Reformed Dutch Church, 
in the city of N". Y., school of, 37. 

Combe, George, his Constitution of 
3fan, 94, 95, 98, 101 note; a friend 
of popular education, 99, 100 ; letters 
of Mr. Mann to, on controversy with 
schoolmasters, 201, 202 ; letters of 
Mr. Mann to, on controversy with 
religious sectaries, 228, 229 ; letters 
of Mr. Mann to, on going to Con- 
gress, 284, 235 ; letter of Mr. Mann 
to, on re-election, 239 ; letter of Mr. 
Mann to, on growing old, 258, 259 ; 
letter of Mr. Mann to, on work at 
Antioch, 262 ; article of, on educa- 
tion in Mass., 278. 

Common School Eevival, the, origin 
of, 72, 73 ; progress of, 281-310 ; — 
in Mass., 275, 276; in Conn., 282, 
283; in E. I., 283; in other N. E. 
States, 283, 284; in N. Y., 284; in 
the West, 284, 285 ; in Mich., 285, 
286; progress of, shown in new 
school systems, 287 ; shown in sta- 
tistics, 287, 288 ; slavery a barrier 
to, 289 ; stimulated by the Civil 
"War, 289, 290 ; shown in educational 
literature, 290, 292 ; effect of, in the 
West, 292, 293 ; a democi-atic move- 
ment, 295 ; involves free education, 
296 ; also gratuity and compulsion, 
296, 297 ; European influence on, 
298-300 ; includes high schools, 302- 
305; extension of, to rural districts, 
305, 306 ; includes both material and 
spiritual elements, 309, 310. 

Common schools, general survey of, 1- 
45; — in Mass., 1-19; in Plymouth, 
19 ; in Conn., 20, 21 ; in N. H., 22, 
23; in Me., 23, 24; in R. I., 25; 
in N. E. as a whole, 26-33; in 
other States, 33, 34; in Va., 35, 
36-39 ; in N. Y., 37, 39, 40 ; in Penn., 



37; in N. J., 37; in S. C, 39; in 

the West, 40; in Ky., 41, 42; in 
Tenn., 41 ; in Ohio, 42, 43 ; in Ind., 
43. 

Compulsory education, 3, 296, 297. 

Connecticut, early education in, 20- 
22 ; education at beginning of the 
century, 27, 28 ; revival in, 282, 283. 

Cousin, M. Victor, report of, on the 
state of public instruction in Prus- 
sia, 64, 65, 285. 



Dame school, the, 9, 25, 31. 

Davis, Eev. Emerson, a member of 
the Mass. Board of Education, 109 ; 
defends Mr. Mann, 230. 

Discoveries and inventions, educa- 
tional influence of, 71, 72. 

District system, the, in Mass., 11, 14 ; 
Mr. Mann on, 177, 306. 

Dwaght, Mr. Edmund, member of the 
State Board of Education, 109 ; se- 
cures the election of Mr. Mann as 
Secretary, 110 ; contributes to popu- 
lar education, 121, 137, 143, 148; 
sketch of, 147 note. 

Dwight, Dr. Timothy, on education 
in N. E., 27, 28. 

E 

Education, influence of, on individual 

and social well-being, 168-, 169, 178, 

179. 
Educational declension in Mass., 9, 

10, 15-17. 
Emulation in schools, 203-205. 
Everett, Gov. Edward, recommends 

the State Board of Education, 106 ; 

on the name "Normal," 145 note; 

on the Mass. Normal schools, 156- 

158. 



Foreign influence on education in the 

U. S., 58-66, 299. 
Free schools, 8, 9, 44, 295, 296, 



INDEX 



Gallaudet, Eev. T. H., on teachers' 

seminaries, 51. 
Ganfr^s, M., work of, on Horace 

Mann, 279. 
German schools, visited by Mr. Mann, 

170-1 T4; mode of instruction in, 

189 ; discipline in, 191. 
Girard College, regimen estabhshed 

in, 215, 216. 
Grammar schools, in Mass., 4, 7, 8, 11, 

12, 18, 19 ; in Conn., 21 ; in N. H., 

23; inYt.,24. 
Griscom, Prof. John, his Year in 

Ev^ope, 62 ; on Mr. Mann, 139, 

140. 
Growth of cities in U. S., the, 72, 304. 
Guizot, M., quoted, 63. 

H 
Hall, Kev. S. E., school for teachers, 

49 ; lectures on school-keeping, 51. 
Harris, Dr. W. T., cited, 72 ; on the 

Normal school course, 159 ; onMass., 

209. 
Harrison, Frederic, quoted, 46. 

J 

Jefferson, Thos., scheme of education 
for Ya., 39. 

Johnson, TV. K., urges the prepara- 
tion of teachers, 56, 57. 

Junkin, President, of Lafayette Col- 
lege, urges the preparation of 
teachers, 57. 

K 

Kingsley, Prof. J. L., on preparation 
of teachers, 48, 49. 



Lancaster, Joseph, in the U. S., 59, 
60. 

Lindsley, Dr. Philip, urges the prepa- 
ration of teachers, 57. 



Madame De Stael's Germany, in- 
fluence of in the U. S., 63. 



Mann, Horace, forerunners of, 46-74 ; 
schools and schoolmasters, 75-104; 
— birth and family, 75, 76 ; regimen 
to which he was subject, 76, 77 ; in- 
ured to toil, 77, 78 ; early education, 
78, 79 ; love of books and study, 
79 ; early relations to nature, 80, 
81 ; access to the Franklin Ubrary, 

81, 82 ; eai-ly rehgious experience, 

82, 83 ; later theories, S3, 84 ; char- 
acter of his childhood, 84, 86 ; pre- 
pares for college, 86; in Brown 
University, 86, 87 ; studies law, 87, 
88 ; tutor and librarian at Brown 
University, 87 ; at the bar, 88, 89 ; 
a member of the State legislature, 
89, 90 ; his friends, 90 ; married life 
of, 91 ; his wife's death and its effect 
upon him, 92, 93 ; description of 
his mind and manner, 93 ; HI health, 
94 ; becomes a phrenologist, 94-96 ; 
influenced by phrenology, 100, 
102 ; equipment for his educational 
work, 102-104; secretary of the 
Massachusetts Board of Education, 
105-114 ;— his selection for the office, 
109-111 ; his ideas relating to the 
office, 111, 113; motives that led 
htm to accept the office, 113, 114; 
his secretaryship in outline, 115- 
144 ; — first work as Secretary, 115, 
116; prepares for his work, 117, 
118 ; obstacles to be overcome, 118, 
119 ; first cii-cuit of the State, 119, 
120 ; his First Eeport, 120 ; his popu- 
lar addresses, 120 ; his communica- 
tion to the legislature relative to 
qualifying teachers, 121 ; second 
educational circuit of the State, 121, 
122 ; subsequent circuits, 122, 123 ; 
brings out The Common School 
Joihrnal, 124, 125 ; repels the oppo- 
sition to the Board of Education 
and secretaryship, 125-130 ; favors 
district school libraries, 131-135 ; 
adopts the Teachers' Institute, 135- 
138 ; marries Miss Peabody and 
visits Europe, 138, 139 ; his visits 



324 



INDEX 



to other States, 139, 140 ; his office 
labors, 140 ; his compensation, 141 ; 
his unselfishness, 141-144 ; receives 
partial payment for money ex- 
pended in behalf of the State, 143, 
144 ; and the Mass. Normal schools, 
150-153, 160, 161 ; reports of, to 
the Board of Education, 162-lSO ; — 
general diifusion of his reports, 162, 
163 ; general character of his reports, 
163 ; the Fh-st Eeport, 164, 165 ; 
Second Report, 165, 166 ; Third Ee- 
port, 166, 167 ; Fourth Eeport, 167, 
168; Fifth Eeport, 168, 169; SLxth Ee- 
port, 169, 170 ; Seventh Eeport (on 
European schools), 170-174 ; Eighth 
Eeport, 174, 175 ; Ninth Eeport, 175, 
176 ; Tenth Eeport, 176, 177 ; Elev- 
enth Eeport, 178 ; Twelfth Eeport, 
178, 179 ; spirit in which he accepted 
the secretaryship, 179 ; controversy 
with Boston schoolmasters, 181-209 ; 
— offence given to Boston school- 
masters by Seventh Eeport, 184 ; 
attack on, by schoolmasters in 
Remarks, 185-193 ; Reply of, to 
schoolmasters, 193-197 ; second at- 
tack of schoolmasters on, in Re- 
joinder, 197; Answer of, to Re- 
joinder, 198 ; close of the contro- 
versy -with, 199 ; letters of, relating 
to controversy, 201, 202 ; objection- 
able passages in contributions to, 
201-203 ; opposed to " prize sys- 
tem," 204 ; difficulties encountered 
by, 195-197 ; controversy of, with 
religious sectaries, 210-232; — attack 
on by Ni Y. OhseriTer and other 
critics, 214, 215 ; attack on by Mr. 
■ E. A. Newton in Christian Wit- 
ness, 215-218 ; three letters of, in 
reply to attacks, 218-220 ; attacked 
by Eev. M. H. Smith, 220, 221 ; re- 
ply of, to M. H. Smith, 222-225; 
appeal of, to advocates of doctrinal 
teaching in schools, 225-228 ; letters 
of, to George Combe, relating to 
religious controversy, 228, 229 ; de- 



fended by Governor Briggs,Eev.Mr. 
Davis, and Dr. Humphrey, 229-230; 
aim of, to establish the status of re- 
ligion in the State schools, 230-232 ; 
a member of Congress, 233-241 ; — 
elected to succeed John Quincy 
Adams, 233 ; reasons for accepting 
office, 234, 235 ; unable to promote 
education as a member of Congress, 
235 ; cultivates old enthusiasms, 
235; defends Drayton and Sayers, 
237 ; political opinions of, 237, 238 ; 
opposition to slavery, 237, 238 ; at- 
tack of, on Daniel Webster, 238; 
re-election in 1850, 240 ; candidate 
for governor of Mass., 240, 241; 
eulogies on, 240, 241 ; president of 
Antioch College, 242-264 ; — elected 
president, 243, 244 ; reasons for 
accepting the office, 244, 245 ; view 
of, of the Mississippi valley, 246, 
247 ; inaugural address, 247, 251 ; 
old ideas of, appear in course of 
study, 252; practises his old con- 
victions about incentives, 254 ; 
views of college discipline and 
moral training, 254, 255 ; holds that 
a college diploma should be a cer- 
tificate of character, 255; spirit of 
the administration of, 255, 256 ; ed- 
ucational work in the West, 257 ; 
as a teacher, 257-259; desire of, to 
live, 259, 260 ; disappointments and 
trials of, 260-264; failing health, 
264; death of, 265; Charles Sum- 
ner on, 265, 266 ; statue of, in front 
of Boston State House, 266 ; char- 
acter and work, 267-281 ; — his mind 
of a practical cast, 267, 268 ; his 
moral enthusiasm, 269 ; an oppor- 
tunist, 270, 271 ; deficient in humor, 
271 ; character of his contribution 
to educational progress, 271, 272 ; 
limitations of, 272, 273; positive 
contributions to pedagogy, 273, 274 ; 
greatest services to education, 274- 
276 ; influence of, in Mass., 276-278 ; 
influence of, in other States, 278; 



INDEX 



influence of, in England, 279; at- 
ti-acts the attention of continental 
educators, 279, 280; centennial of 
birth observed, 2S0 ; value of study 
oflifeof, 2S1. 

Mann, Thomas, father of Horace, 75, 
76. 

Martin, G. H., quoted, 12, 14. 

3IassachusetU Magazine, The, sug- 
gestion of, 46, 47. 

May, Eev. S. J., on " ma'am schools," 
31 ; second principal of Lexington 
Normal School, 154, 155. 

Morley, John, on the day of ideals, 
73 ; on George Combe, 101 note. 

"Moving school," the, 11, 12. 

N 

Neef, Joseph, first Pestalozzian teacher 
in U. S., 61, 62. 

New England child-life, 85. 

New England Priiner, The, 9, 33, 
210,211. 

New England Puritans, the, interest 
of, in education, 1, 2; educational 
ideas of, 6, 7. 

Newton, Edward A., member of the 
Board of Education, 109 ; attacks 
the Board and Secretary, 216. 

New York, educational revival in, 57, 
58, 131, 284. 

Normal schools, origin of, in France, 
145, 146; in Germany, 146, 147; 
advocated by Eev. Chas. Brooks, 
147 ; Mr. Edmund Dmght's contri- 
bution to, 147, 148; three founded 
in Mass., 149 ; opposition to, 150, 
151 ; first selection of teachers for, 
152 ; the Lexington school, 153, 154 ; 
Eev. Cja-us Pierce, first principal 
of, 152-154; Eev. S. J. May, sec- 
ond principal, 154, 155; course of 
instruction provided for, 155, 160. 



Olmstead, Prof. Denison, on state of 
education in Conn., 47, 48. 



Page, D. P., Theory and Practice 

of Teaching of , 291. 

Parker, Eev. Theodore, letter of Mr. 
Maun to, 262 ; letter of Charles Sum- 
ner to, 265 ; on Mann's lack of ideal- 
ism and his opportunism, 268, 269 ; 
on Mann's work for the schools of 
Mass., 274. 

"Pauper schools," 44. 

Pecaut, M., on Mr. Mann, 268, 279. 

Pestalozzian ideas and methods, intro- 
duced into the U. S., 61, 62. 

Phrenology, eifect of, on Mr. Mann, 
94-96, 100-102 ; its fundamental 
ideas considered, 96, 97 ; its influ- 
ence upon education, 98-101 ; influ- 
ence on Eichard Cobden, 101 note. 

Physiology, Mr. Mann on study of, 
102, 169, 170. 

Pickett, Albert and John W., editors 
of The Academician, 69, 70. 

Pierce, Eev. Cyrus, first principal of 
Lexington Normal School, 152, 153 ; 
his responsibility, 154 ; relation of, 
to the Normal school course, 160 ; 
a phrenologist, 153. 

Primary schools of Boston, the, origin 
of, 32, 33. 

Private schools, 31, 293. 

Public school society of N. T. City, 
the, founded, 40 ; introduces Lan- 
caster's system, 59. 



E 

Eeading, methods of teaching, 166, 
189, 190. 

Eeligious teaching, in early schools, of 
Mass., 210; decline of, 211, 212; 
struggle to retain, 213 et seq. 

Eeports, Mr. Mann's Annual to the 
Board of Education,162-180 ; — Geo. 
B. Emerson on, 162 ; general char- 
acter of, 163; the First, 164, 165; 
supplementary, on schoolhouses, 
165; the Second, 165, 166; the 
Third, 166, 167; the Fourth, 167, 



INDEX 



168 ; the Fifth, 168, 169 ; the Sixth, 
169, 170 ; the Seventh, 170-174 ; the 
Eighth, 174, 175; the Ninth, 175, 
176; the Tenth, 176, 177; the 
Eleventh, 178; the Twelfth, 178, 
179 ; reveal Mr. Mann's genius, 180. 

Eussell, Wm., suggestions on educa- 
tion, 49. 

S 

School discipline, 208, 209. 

School funds, in Conn., 21, 22 ; in Va., 
39 ; discussed, 306-309. 

School motives, etc., Mr. Mann on, 
175, 176. 

School nomenclature, the, of Boston, 
31, 32. 

School societies, the, in Conn., 21. 

Scotch-Irish, the, 36, 

Secretaryship of Mass. Board of Edu- 
cation, the, 100 ; providing for, 106 ; 
Mr. Carter considered for the office, 
109, 110; Mr. Mann selected for, 
110-113; Mr. Mann's, in outline, 
115-144. 

Seventh Eeport, Mr. Mann's, 138, 
139, 170-174; controversy caused 
by, 181-209 ; eifects of controversy, 
199-201 ; republished in England, 
278. 

Shaler, Prof. IST. S., quoted, 41, 42. 

Slavery, Mr. Mann's opposition to, 
234-240 ; unfavorable to schools, 2S9. 

Smith, Eev. M. H., sermon of, 220, 
221 ; reply of Mr. Mann to, 222, 
223 ; further controversy of Mr. 
Mann with, 224, 225, 230. 



State constitutions, those of Mass., 13 ; 
educational provisions in, 43-45. 

State school system, Mr. Mann on 
foundation of, 176, 177. 

Stowe, Prof. C. E., report to the 
General Assembly of Ohio, 65, 66. 

Sumner, Charles, letter of, to Theo- 
dore Parker on Mr. Mann's death, 
264, 265. 



Teachers' Institutes, 136-138. 
Teachers, wages of, in Mass. in 1837, 

165. 
Ticknor, Geo., student at Gottingen, 

63, 64. 
Township system, 10, 177, 206. 

W 

Wait, Eev. O. J., letter of Mr. Mann 
to, on troubles at Antioch College, 
261, 262. 

Webster, Daniel, Mr. Mann's contro- 
versy with, 238, 239. 

Webster, Noah, on education in N. E., 
26. 

West, the, influence of, on education, 
40, 192, 193. 

Weeden, W. B., quoted, 10, 11, 14. 

Winthrop, Governor, quoted, 8. 

Woodbridge, W. C, editor of Ameri- 
can Annals of Education and 
Instruction, 71. 



Voluntary schools, 25. 



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ARISTOTLE. 

The whole of ancient pedagogy is Professor Davidson's subject, the 
course of education being traced up to Aristotle, — an account of whose 
life and system forms, of course, the main portion of the book, — and 
down from that great teacher, as well as philosopher, through the decline 
of ancient civilization. An appendix discusses " The Seven Liberal Arts," 
and paves the way for the next work in chronological sequence, — Professor 
West's, on Alcuin. The close relations between Greek education and 
Greek social and political life are kept constantly in view by Professor 
Davidson. A special and very attractive feature of the work is the cita- 
tion, chiefly in English translation, of passages from original sources 
expressing the spirit of the different theories described. 

" I am very glad to see this excellent contribution to the history of educa- 
tion. Professor Davidson's work is admirable. His topic is one of the most 
profitable in the entire history of culture."— W. T. Harris, U. S. Connnissioucr 

of Education. 

" ' Aristotle ' is delightful reading. I know nothing in English that covers 
the field of Greek Education so well. You will find it very hard to maintain 
this level in the later works of the series, but I can wish you nothing better 
than that you may do so." — G. Stanley Hall, Claj-k University. 

ALCUIN. 

Professor West aims to develop the story of educational institutions 
in Europe from the beginning of the influence of Christianity on education 
to the origin of the Universities and the first beginnings of the modern 
movement. A careful analysis is made of the effects of Greek and 
Roman thought on the educational theory and practice of the early 
Christian, and their great system of schools, and its results are studied 
with care and in detail. The personality of Alcuin enters largely into the 
story, because of his dominating influence in the movement. 

' * Die von Ihnen mir freundlichst zugeschickte Schrift des Herrn Professor 
West iiber Alcuin habe ich mit lebhaftem Interesse gelesen und bin uberrascht 
davon in Nord America eine so eingehende Beschaftigung mit unserer Vorzeit 
und eine so ausgebreitete Kenntniss der Literature iiber diesen Gegenstand zu 
finden. Es sind mir wohl Einzelheiten begeenet an denen ich etwas auszu- 
setzen fand, die ganze Auffassung und Darstellung aber kann ich nur als sehr 
wohl gelungen und zutreffend bezeichnen. ' '—Professor Wattenbach, Berlin. 

' ' I take pleasure in saying that ' Alcuin ' seems to me to combine careful 
scholarly investigation with popularity, and condensation with interest of de- 
tail, in a truly admirable way. ' '—Professor G. T. Ladd, of Yale. 



THE GREAT EDUCATORS 

ABELARD. 

M. Compayre, the well-known French educationist, has prepared in this 
volume an account of the origin of the great European Universities 
that is at once the most scientific and the most interesting in the English 
language. Naturally the University of Paris is the central figure in the 
account ; and the details of its early organization and influence are fully 
given. Its connection with the other great universities of the Middle 
Ages and with modern university movement is clearly pointed out. 
Abelard, whose system of teaching and disputation was one of the earliest 
signs of the rising universities, is the typical figure of the movement ; and 
M. Compayre has given a sketch of his character and work, from an 
entirely new point of view, that is most instructive. 

' ' ' Abelard ' may fairly be called the founder of university education in 
Europe, and we have in this volume a description of his work and a careful 
analysis of his character. As the founder of the great Paris University in the 
thirteenth century the importance of his work can hardly be overestimated. 
The chapter devoted to Abelard himself is an intensely interesting one, and the 
other chapters are of marked value, devoted as they are to the origin and early 
history of universities. . . . The volume is a notable educational work. "— 

Boston Daily Tt-avelcr. 

LOYOLA. 

This work is a critical and authoritative statement of the educational 
principles and method adopted in the Society of Jesus, of which the 
author is a distinguished member. The first part is a* sketch, biograph- 
ical and historical, of the dominant and directing personality of Ignatius, 
the Founder of the order, and his comrades, and of the establishment and 
early administrations of the Society. In the second an elaborate analysis 
of the system of studies is given, beginning with an account of Aquaviva 
and the Ratio Studioruin, and considering, under the general heading of 
"the formation of the master,"" courses of literature and philosophy, of 
divinity and allied sciences, repetition, disputation, and dictation ; and 
under that of "formation of the scholar," symmetry of the courses pur- 
sued, the prelection, classic literatures, school management and control, 
examinations and graduation, grades and courses. 

" This volume on St. Ignatius of * Loyola and the Educational System of the 
Jesuits, ' by the Rev. Thomas Hughes, will probably be welcomed by others be- 
sides those specially interested in the theories and methods of education. 
"Written by a member of the Jesuit Society, it comes to us with authority, and 
presents a complete and well - arranged survey of the work of educational 
development carried out by Ignatius and his followers." —Zc^^^/cw Satiiraay 

Reviezv. 

FROEBEL. 

Friedrich Froebel stands for the movement known both in Europe 
and in this country as the New Education, more completely than any 
other single name. The kindergarten movement, and the whole de- 
velopment of modern methods of teaching, have been largely stimulated 
by, if not entirely based upon, his philosophical exposition of education. 
It is not believed that any other account of Froebel and his work is so 
complete and exhaustive, as the author has for many years been a student 
of Froebel's principles and methods not only in books, but also in actual 
practice in the kindergarten. Mr. Bowen is a frequent examiner of kin- 



THE a HEAT EDUCATORS 

dergartens, of the children in them, and of students who are trained to "be 
kindergarten teachers. 

' ' No one, in England or America, is fitted to give a more sympathetic or lucid 
interpretation of Froebel than Mr. Courthope Bowen. . . . Mr. Bowen's book 
will be a most important addition to any library, and no student of Froebel can 
afford to do without it." — Kate Dolglas Wiggix, Ac-m York City. 

HERBART. 

In this book, President De Garmo has given, for the first time in the 
EngHsh language, a systematic analysis of the Herbartian theory of ed- 
ucation, which is now so much, studied and discussed in Great Britain 
and the United " States, as well as in Germany. Not only does the 
volume contain an exposition of the theory as expounded by Herbart 
himself, but it traces in detail the development of that theory and the 
additions to it made by such distinguished names as Ziller, Story, Frick, 
Rein, and the American School of Herbartians. Especially valuable will 
be found Dr. De Garmo's careful and systematic exposition of the prob- 
lems that centre around the concentration and correlation of studies. 
These problems are generally acknowledged to be the most pressing and 
important at present before the teachers of the country. 

' ' Some one has said there can be no great need without the means of supply- 
ing such need, and no sooner did the fraternity realize its need of a knowledge 
of the essentials of Herbart than Dr. De Garmo's excellent work on ' Herbart and 
the Herbartians,' by Scribner's Sons of New York, appeared, a book which, 
costing but a dollar, gives all that the teacher really needs, and gives it with 
devout loyalty and sensible discrimination. It is the work of a believer, a de- 
votee, an enthusiast, but it is the masterpiece of the writer who has not for- 
gotten what he owes to his reputation as a scholar in his devotion to his 

master . " — Jon ma I of Ediica tion . 

THE ARNOLDS. 

No book heretofore published concerning one or both of the Arnolds 
has accomplished the task performed in the present instance by Sir 
Joshua Fitch. A long-time colleague of Matthew Arnold in the British 
Educational Department, the author — leaving biography aside — has, with 
unusual skill, written a succinct and fascinating account of the important 
services rendered to the educational interests of Great Britain by the 
Master of Rugby and his famous son. The varied and successful efforts 
of the latter in behalf of a better secondary education during his long 
official career of thirty-five years as Inspector of Training Schools, no 
less than the notable effect produced at Rugby by the inspiring example 
of Thomas Arnold's high-minded character and enthusiastic scholarship, 
are admirably presented. Whatever in the teaching of both seems likely 
to prove of permanent value has been judiciously selected by the author 
from the mass of their writings, and incorporated in the present volume. 
The American educational public, which cannot fail to acknowledge a 
lasting debt of gratitude to the Arnolds, father and son, will certainly wel- 
come this sympathetic exposition of their influence and opinions. 

" The book is opportune, for the Arnoldian tradition, though widely diffused 
in America, is not well based on accurate knowledge and is pretty much in 
the air. Dr. Fitch seems the fittest person by reason of his spiritual syrnpathy 
with the father and his personal association with the son, to sketch in this brief 
way the two most typical modern English eaucators. And he has done his work 
almost ideally well within his limitations of purpose. . . . The two men 
live in these pages as they were. ' ^—Edncatw7ial Revie%v, New York. 



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